Seems I stumbled into a terrible career. Teachers, so it goes (shout out to Vonnegut, there), are disrespected, overworked, underpaid, and undervalued. They work numerous unpaid overtime hours, their planning time is eroded by mandatory meetings, students are increasingly unmotivated and uninvolved, parents of the helicopter variety critically eyeball every lesson put forth, administration is micromanaging and unhelpful, and control over curriculum is nonexistent as the teacher is reduced to parroting prepackaged lessons. Did I leave anything out? Oh, and the school year has been degraded from a celebration of learning to a mad scramble to teach students how to excel on an annual high-stakes exam.
I have noticed, during my eight years in teaching, that the teachers who are most satisfied with their public perception and their role are those who have significant employment experience outside of education. Not just a college stint cashiering at the Old Navy or summers spent mowing lawns. But considerable time spent in a corporate grind.
Even working in restaurants, my own personal experience. Unpaid hours? As a manager, I worked a standard 60-hour work week, 5 12-hour days a week, of which most included all holidays and weekends. There were YEARS I went without a vacation because we lacked staff to cover my off-time--yeah, I am talking about you, Shoney's. No extra pay for any extra duties--that is what on salary means. No time to plan? That is why you stay after closing--alone, with only the rattle of ice dropping from the Hoshizaki for company--to do your schedules. Unmotivated and unskilled kids? Do we even have time for the hundreds of examples of employee--and management--hijinks I could name here? No control over the direction of the workplace--administrative boondoggle and idiotic mandatory programs? It is not only schools that are subject to overwhelming corporate control that saps motivation. Not by far.
Hmmm, I think I have a sweet deal now. I do work extra hours--almost every weekend I spend at least 4 hours choosing lesson plans. The lesson plans I house in Google Drive folders so I can roll them out and tweak them next year. But I have two weeks vacation every Christmas. A week for Thanksgiving. A week for Spring Break. Martin Luther King Day. Good Friday. Not to mention summer break. Now, teachers will be the first to tell you that summer break is not what it seems--months and months of off-time. You do PD--professional development--during the summer. And any teacher worth his or her salt does a lot of impromptu planning for the next year.
And to get further into summer--I teach summer school. Every. Single. Year. Summer school, after-school detention, campus-based tutoring, and other additional duties are classified as off-contract work.
And you get paid. Different districts do it differently. Some pay an hourly rate, some pay your usual daily rate. But it comes in addition to your normal teacher paycheck. So----if you do extra work--you get paid more money. So--plenty of opportunity to make more money. Plus, the extra pay generally goes into your teacher pension accounting. Doesn't sound so bad, does it?
We also do this aforementioned PD during the summer. The state requires it to keep your certification. Well, this is common to other professions. Medicine, law, engineering, even life insurance sales. The difference between teacher PD and other PD is this--ours is almost always free. Provided by the state or the district. Ask an engineer if PD is free. Wait--I can save you time. Just so happens I am married to an engineer, and her PD is most certainly NOT free. Rather expensive, and the more states you are certified in--the more separate courses you must take to satisfy each authority. Ooof. That smarts. And imagine this; a week during the summer updating your knowledge and skills is certainly a lot less taxing than a week spent in the classroom at 100% engagement with youngsters.
That brings me to the kernel of my narrative--but what about the parents? What about the helicopter parents who question everything you do? Who insist that little Johnny is a perfect child who would never never never disrupt others in class? Who ask why Susie made a 98 on an essay rather than a 100? This is the fear--and the bane--of current teachers. Those overinvolved parents who do not trust you, do not trust your knowledge, and do not trust your decisions. For example; in the mail today came a political flier from one candidate for our local school board race, a real put-up smear job, who quotes the opponent as saying "parents don't always know the best way to educate their children." Designed to inflame the electorate against elitist teachers and for the rights of parents who, after all, know best. Right? Right?
Well, sorry to disappoint you, but unless your last name is Montessori or you run Khan Academy, this is not only probably but definitely true. Covid taught us that parents are not teachers--five years later, we are still remediating youngsters who lost a year of instruction to screen time. Who knows whether to start the academic year with fiction or nonfiction, and how to associate graphemes with phonemes? Why do students practice proportions before percentages, and dividing polynomials before factoring quadratics? A teacher knows, that's who. I am the one who emphasizes the 7 principles of the US Constitution during my Texas History curriculum because I am setting the stage for next year's US History course.
But-but-but-outside of the occasional inflammatory political broadsheet, I have not actually encountered any parents like these in real life. While it is true that my niche is ESL education, and parents tend to come from more traditional (meaning non-American) backgrounds where they are more likely to trust the teacher than your stereotypical skeptical Texan, it is also true that from time to time I teach a class of Regular. American. Kids. Same result there. No interference, no disrespect.
Of course, I take action at the very beginning of the year to establish a relationship and a channel of communication. There I take a lesson from my past. As a restaurant manager, my aim was to visit every single table in the dining room each night. Preferably to introduce myself before service began, before food was delivered. Why? To build trust that I was there to make sure things ran smoothly, that I could and would quickly solve any bottlenecks, that I could be trusted. As a sales manager at Elmwood Cemetery, I spent a lot of time on the grounds helping families locate graves of loved ones and to inspect the condition of their plots. Why? Because, as my boss Phyllis explained to me years ago, to each family, that enormous 400+ acre cemetery was only one grave wide. You have to prove that you are there personally to be of service in order to garner trust and establish a connection.
So that is what I do each year. From the very first week, I send out emails. Lots of them. I introduce myself and give a preview of how the learning in the class proceeds. I notice the student's strengths and, like the One-Minute Manager says, I catch 'em doing something right and celebrate it. If the Something Right happens to be prosocial (like, say, making a new student welcome in the classroom community) rather than solely academic, I really double down on that. Might even send a commendation to the counselor and the assistant principal for such as that.
This goes a long way toward establishing an expectation of trust and good behavior and academic achievement and all the rest. Setting the stage pays off in so many ways. It has served me well. And my students.
And in the final summary, the payoff is incredible. This is the perfect career mission for me. Where else can I see the evidence of improvement right in front of me? Where else can I work alongside such a group of people inspired and motivated to help others? Children have very little of the artifice that adults have developed. When last year's kids stop by my class to tell me that Texas History prepared them for US History, or that I was right that they are more successful when they add more detail to their paragraphs, they honor me with their truthfulness. When they email me from high school thanking me for believing in their ultimate success, they glorify what I do everyday.
This morning, I was leaving a grocery store and heard my name called out by an excited voice: "Mr. Barber! Mr. Barber!" It was Angelina, from last year, with her family in tow. A former newcomer, meaning she arrived here with very little English. I taught her in the 6th and 7th grades--but for the 8th, she qualified for general education English classes, and my prediction is that she is about to exit the ESL support program entirely--about 2 years ahead of schedule. I was buried buried buried in the avalanche of handshakes and hugs from mom and dad and grandparents, from aunt and uncle and sisters and cousins. Beaming parents and children alike. Who would not feel the honor and the glory from being so treasured and respected by an entire little community of a family?
- “I touch the future. I teach.”– Christa Mcauliffe
