(This is the part where the teacher lists everything they have to do, expecting everyone to be impressed, and then starts to hyperventilate because it turns out listing everything you have to do is pretty stressful. If you've heard it all before, skip to paragraph 10. If you want to pinpoint the exact moment where my voice starts to shift up an octave and I reach for a paper bag, start at paragraph 7.)
This Sunday, I wrote four letters of recommendation, which took about six hours. I was pretty proud of myself, and sure that I'd be a) in good shape and b) rested for the week to come.
On Monday, I taught for 160 minutes, supervised during lunch, met with a student about his Personal Project during the second half of lunch, graded an assessment that had been handed in late, moderated short stories with another tenth grade teacher, wrote another letter of recommendation, worked on some tenth grade curriculum stuff, and planned my lessons about five minutes before they happened.
On Tuesday, I planned two lessons, analyzed two poems, taught for 240 minutes, supervised a student meeting during lunch, worked on a lot more curriculum stuff, and wrote another letter of recommendation.
Today, I planned two lessons, did some pre-reading to educate myself for one of my classes about which I'm a little unsure, taught for a paltry 110 minutes, supervised a student meeting during lunch, went to a 2.5 hour meeting after lunch, and conferenced with some tenth graders about their grades.
I'm not 100% sure what I'm teaching tomorrow; I'm sure I'll figure it out before it happens. Right now, I'm just trying to gear myself up to give feedback on my twelfth graders' practice IOC outlines, because if I don't give them feedback tonight, they won't have enough time to prepare for the IOC that counts for their school grade, and if they don't do well on their school IOC, then they won't be able to prepare for their IB IOC, which is in three weeks, except that we have professional development next week and then the schools are closing because the APEC conference is coming to town, so really I only have three lessons left with them before we start prep for the For Reals IB IOC, and we've only just started Blake, so basically I have three lessons with them to get them to feel comfortable with the poetry of a guy who thought the ghost of his dead brother haunted him with the purpose of teaching him how to record poems and designs on copper (and if you think this sentence has two many acronyms and commas, imagine what it feels like to LIVE THROUGH IT).
I'm even behind on that, of course; I should have given them feedback on their outlines last night. Last night, though, I was catching up on the things I should have done weeks ago: organizing a unit that ended two weeks ago and writing a letter of recommendation that was requested in September.
In the next week, I will have to grade 26 IOCs, 18 video commentaries, and 21 Romeo and Juliet newspaper tasks. And plan some more lessons.
Other things I am behind on: getting my prescriptions renewed, eating vegetables, finding clothes that fit, going to the gym, taking my clothes to the dry cleaners'.
This is teaching, then. You are always behind. You are always tired. You are never enough.
And it's worth it! It is absolutely 100% worth it. You are stimulated, and you are purposeful, and you are never bored. Ever. (I am about to get very angry very soon in this post, and I want you to remember that I am not actually angry about my job. I love my job and I love my students, and I wouldn't trade it or them for anything, ever.)
So this is a tired that I can live with, really. I'm exhausted and I can't keep up, but at least I know I'm running somewhere. I can handle that.
Here's what I can't handle: popping on Facebook and seeing that TIME Magazine cover with a gavel about to crush an apple and a headline that proclaims, "ROTTEN APPLES: It's nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher. Some tech millionaires have found a way to change that."
I have so many feelings about this that I don't even know what they are. (For example, why is the apple on the cover a good apple? Poor planning or a secretly pro-teacher designer? Is the gavel supposed to be my grading? It feels like the gavel might be my grading.)
I can't even read the whole piece; I'd have to subscribe to TIME, and that's just not going to happen at this point. I'm sure the article is nuanced and measured and probably far less offensive than the cover art and headline would suggest. Guess what, though: it doesn't matter. The majority of people who see that cover -- on the newsstand in Safeway, on Facebook, in a bodega -- aren't going to read the article. They're going to see it and think, "Oh, yeah, rotten apples." Or, "That's right, it's impossible to fire teachers. Remember Ms. Crabapple from tenth grade civics? She was the worst!"
Or, if they're a teacher, "God. I'm exhausted with this." (Or, if they're friends with or married to a teacher, "God, my BFF/girlfriend/husband/daughter is NOT GOING TO SHUT UP ABOUT THIS tonight, is he/she?")
I'm a teacher, so mostly I'm just exhausted with this. Lily Eskelsen García says it much better and more eloquently than I am about to (which is probably why she's the president of the NEA and I just write a blog about my feelings), but seriously: this is bananas. The background noise of hearing that I'm not enough? The magazine articles, the headlines, the talking heads? Do you really think I'm not already furious at myself for being behind? Do you really think I don't feel the weight of my students' disappointment every time I don't have an assignment back to them, that I don't feel my own hypocrisy keenly every time I yell at them for turning a paper in late?
Then you're going to say that this isn't about me -- it's about the bad teachers! You know, the rotten apples? Well, okay then. Do you really want to talk about how the thing that's going to fix education is figuring out how to fire bad teachers? Not about the immense disparity between different districts' funding because we fund the majority of public education through property tax? Not about the fact that the majority of education reform -- mostly driven by people who haven't set foot in a classroom in at least a decade -- is attempting to slap a bandaid on our nation's actual, immense poverty problem?
All right, I get it: bad teachers are to blame for the disintegration of American society. The fact that bad teachers cannot be fired is
Only the fact that I teach teenagers for a living and have therefore cultivated a Madonna-like patience (ha) is keeping me from swearing at you until I am blue in the face.
(Not you, you understand. You're reading this! I like you.)
(Think of this more as an anguished, strangled, barbaric YAWP in the direction of every politician and media figure who wants to tell me how to do my job. It's the sad hallooo from the end of the Where the Wild Things Are movie, but one coming from the teacher who listens to the world and all he hears in return is how much he sucks.)
Because here's the thing: as hard as I'm working and as tired as I am, I'm not teaching in a public school in the United States of America right now. I honestly have very little to complain about. And yet, and yet -- that TIME cover hit me like a kick to the face, because it's implicating my friends. It's accusing the very people who inspired me as a beginning teacher and who inspire me now. Even in China.
Compared to me now, the teachers in my old school have twice the students and half the planning time. Their students do not have ayis making their dinners or their beds; mine do not have holes where their bellies should be. Their students do not have to worry about 2.5 particulate matter levels, true, but mine don't have to worry about walking home through a neighborhood where they're likely to get jumped. We're both preparing students for the same IB assessments, but we're not in the same boat, because my boat has free colored pencils and a laptop, internet access, and an assumed level of technical competence for every student.
To teach in America is to hear that you're a saint, and to teach in America is to hear that you're a rotten apple. All teachers know we're not saints. We're too behind on everything to be saints. The only other option for us in this narrative is to be rotten apples, and that makes us defensive and it makes us tired.
I'm tired. I go to school. I teach. My students make me smile; I'm less tired.
It's the only solution I've been able to come up with so far.
But here's another thing I have: I might not be an American public school teacher right now, but that just means I have a tiny bit more energy than I might otherwise have.
It means that even if my friends are feeling defeated and attacked and depleted, I might just have a little bit of fight left in me to yell my head off at the people who dare to imply that they are anything less than they are.
YAWP.
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