Tomorrow, all teachers report to school for a week of 'professional development' and meetings with parents. Thus, I start another school year with about 40 faculty, a handful of administrators, and others who help the gears of our school turn.
I have never understood why we do this until this year. We come into school early, and the first two days, outside of the logistics, is a song-and-dance about 'best practice', and 'serving kids well', and all of those educational buzzwords. I got a packet in the mail from my principal (who I will shorten to 'P') with much of the same type of stuff: readings that talk about how to teach well in lofty, philosophical terms. Preaching to the choir, all of it.
This used to be the part of the year that fired me up and got me off to a 'good start'. I always felt good after this pep talk, after a summer's rest and the high of seeing seniors graduate. I never saw its purpose beyond that, as I was blinded by the surface importance of talking about 'issues of equity', 'teaching and learning'...the buzzwords go on.
This time, I am simply reminded of The Ghost and the Darkness, where Michael Douglas is Charles Remington dancing with the Maasai before the hunt of a killer lion, and the other members of his cohort are talking about how he came to be there: veteran of the Civil War (a Confederate), roaming the world in exile, hunting all over. He says that he's going to join the Maasai in their dance, and 'convince each other that [they]'re still brave.'
How is meeting for a week as a faculty any different? We are simply there to reaffirm that we do this work for a reason, and that we might just do it well. If you know the movie, you know that they haven't actually hunted down the lion yet, and they don't. They are not successful. Who's to say that they don't convince themselves every time that they're still brave, only to come up short a quarter, a third, half the time? All the time? Who says we're good at what we do, really?
I think in years past, I felt like a member of the Maasai, taking pride in doing the dance around the fire, getting the rush and the urge to hunt. Now I feel like Remington, who cynically sees through the pomp and circumstance of the dance to what it is, purely: an act of beating on our own chests, convincing ourselves we are brave.
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I think what I am most scared of this year is just knowing that what I love to do is on the line in my heart every day. If you're a teacher, you know that you can reach out and almost touch the purity of teaching. It's a rush like no other, because you simply feel that you've made an impact, however slight. It's crazy, I know, to describe it as spiritual, and some might not feel that way, but I do. Why can't that purity be present in all aspects of our work? It's not, but it should be.
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Hawthorne: I wouldn't have thought bravery would be a problem for you.
Charles Remington: Well, you hope each time it won't be... But you never really know.
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As someone who is trying to decide if education or industry is my (nearish) future, I really look forward to reading your thoughts :-)
ReplyDeleteI can tell that this year will come with some hard decisions; I wish you the best of luck tackling them. And I'm just wondering if maybe later in the future the political realm or the writing realm (or both) are possibilities. If so I will look forward to that. Either way, I really enjoyed having you as a teacher and learned a lot from you inside and outside of class. I wish you the best of luck this year.
ReplyDelete-M.O.
I was a teacher in one form or another from 2005-June 2010. I, too, was screamed at, told my curriculum sucked, had no backing from my admin, and at one point was forced to call DCF on my superior, and was ultimately made to leave that job due to that decision. I have since left teaching, and am now doing a different type of work that involves education, but in a much removed way from the classroom. I'm very much looking forward to your thoughts, as I feel a lot of guilt at times for leaving teaching, and wonder as to whether or not I should return (almost on a daily basis). I think that what you feel is something that every teacher feels in some regard. I'm sure that admin. will sit and say buzz words like "budget cuts" (and we all know the others) but it all boils down to the fact that teachers return day in and day out to their classrooms because they simply love teaching. There really isn't a whole lot more that got me up and into my classroom some days. I used to get up and go teach for less than $20,000 a day, no prep period, no lunch time (and unfortunately no union to bring these issues to) and numerous times I asked myself why it was that I allowed myself to be subjected to all that. And each and every time it was that I loved teaching. Anyone that doesn't get bitten by the teaching bug really can't understand as much as someone that goes and does it day in and day out.
ReplyDeleteHowever ....
Patience wears thin, resources wear thin, sanity wears thin. I look forward to reading your 5th year journey and I hope to gain some new knowledge and insights while I read through your year.
(We come from different backgrounds -- I taught Elementary Ed)
Thanks, everyone! I am glad to have you all involved in the conversation, as I am more trying to learn what it is about our schools that makes this happen to so many good teachers. Clstlnite, you are right; we do this because we love it...and I think every teacher really does. So why, why, why do we leave?
ReplyDelete