I’m in my fifth year of teaching English at a Title I middle
school. Title I schools are public schools that receive special grants because
of their high number of students who have been identified as at-risk. I adore
my students and my teaching team. I love teaching. I’m really good at it. I
respect my administration and feel valued by them.
But at the end of this year, I’m leaving. I’m not sure if
I’ll continue teaching elsewhere or start a new career. If I do leave, I’ll be one
of the 40-50% of teachers who leave during their first five years. A drop in
the bucket.
To other teachers, I’m sure this isn’t surprising. Without
knowing me or where I teach, they can probably easily guess why someone who
loves her job and is good at it would be leaving.
But it’s not teachers who need to know what it’s like. It’s
everyone else. People who have no idea what it’s like teaching in a Title I
school. Some of these people are even making important decisions about
education.
There are so many things I would tell them.
I would tell them about the bright bulletin boards, posters,
and student work that are either taken down or covered with white butcher paper
for most of the spring semester, because the state mandates that there can be
no words of any kind on the walls during one of the 14 standardized tests.
I would tell them about the 35 desks I have in my classroom,
and how in two of my classes, all the desks are filled.
I would tell them about the hours I’ve spent outside of
class time writing grants to get novels because my school doesn’t have the money
for them.
I would tell them that I get to school about two hours
before the first bell every day, but I still spend less time at school than
most of my colleagues.
I would tell them about how I’m not allowed to fail a
student without turning in a form to the front office that specifies all instances
of parent contact, describing in detail the exact accommodations and extra
instruction that the child was given. I
would tell them about how impossible this form is to complete, when leaving a
voicemail doesn’t count as contact and many parents’ numbers change or are
disconnected during the school year. I would tell them how unrealistic it is to
document every time you help a child when you have a hundred of them, and how
this results in so many teachers passing students who should be failing.
I would tell them how systems that have been put in place to
not leave children behind are allowing them to fall even further behind.
I would tell them that even though I love my job and work
harder at it than I’ve ever worked for anything, the loudest voice in my head
is the one that is constantly saying you’re
not doing enough. I hear it all the time.
I would tell them about the student in one of my classes who
in August of last year, flat-out refused to do any work because of how much he
hated reading. I would tell them that today, when he found out we weren’t going
to be doing book groups, I heard him mutter, “Oh, man. I wanted to keep
reading,” and I said, “WHAT DID YOU SAY?” really loud and shook his shoulders
jokingly. We laughed together and I had to change the subject quickly because I
choked up thinking of how much work it has taken both of us to get to this
place, and of how badly I hope that his high school teachers don’t give up on
him.
I would tell them that if I could compartmentalize things so
that teaching was simply instructing a reasonable number of students and
grading and planning lessons and visiting students’ families, I would be a
teacher forever. No question.
I would tell them that I teach the honors section of my
grade level, but only about 70% of my honors students had even passed the
standardized test the year before they came to me. My colleagues who teach the
non-honors classes inherit students with a passing rate of 30-40%.
I would tell them that almost all my students passed after
being in my class, and that I’ve worked really, really hard to find a way of getting my
kids to excel without “teaching to the test,” but that instead of being proud
of this, I think of the handful who didn’t pass, and how I could have done more
for them.
I would tell them about my pencil cup that I keep filled
from donations and out of my own pocket. I don’t ask for collateral or even for
students to return them because it would take up too much instructional time. I
once had a student refuse to do work because he didn’t have a pencil, and I
said, Don’t you know that you’ll have to
do the work so that you can go on to the next grade with your friends? And
he said, without skipping a beat, I’ve
failed almost all my classes since third grade and I always promote. I don’t
even go to summer school. I stood there, dumbfounded, knowing he was right,
but surprised he’d figured out the system so easily. The next day, I had the
pencil cup.
I would tell them about how policies that have been designed
to not leave children behind are also teaching them that hard work doesn’t
matter.
I would tell them about David, a severely dyslexic student my
second year of teaching who made my teaching life miserable early on with his
constant defiance and disrespect. I would tell them about the day he came in
early before school and asked if I could type out a poem that he’d written and
memorized in his head, and as he recited it I started crying, then he started
crying too, and I would tell them how everything was different between David
and me after that.
I would tell them about how I try to divide my time between
everybody when my students are working in groups, but I almost always end up
spending more time with my struggling students. I know that my students who are
behind need me, but that doesn’t mean that my advanced students don’t need me
just as much. I always feel torn. In an effort to not leave five students
behind, I’m leaving behind 30 others.
I would tell them about my students’ parents, and about the
dreams they have for their children. I would tell them about the single mom
whose husband died last year and left behind two children with learning
disabilities, and how she’s now working two jobs to make ends meet. I would
tell them about how the dad of one of my students who took me aside at Parent
Night and said to me, with tears in his eyes, “I didn’t get past the fifth
grade. But Carmen, she’s going places. I know it.”
I would tell them that students who break rules at our
school often don’t receive consequences. Last year our school had a higher number
of office referrals and in-school suspensions, so this year teachers have been
“strongly encouraged” to deal with discipline problems themselves. That means
that unless the offense is severe or dangerous, students remain in class,
whether or not their behavior is blatantly defiant.
I would tell them what a difficult situation this creates
for the brand-new teachers, who are learning for the first time how to manage a
classroom in an environment with so little disciplinary support. I would tell
them how many teachers—good teachers—I know who have walked away during or
after their first year because of this.
I would tell them about how a few weeks ago, I told another
teacher’s student I would be escorting her to the office for her behavior, and
she replied, “Why the f**k would that matter?” This student was back in that
teacher’s class five minutes later with candy she received in the office.
I would tell them how hard it is to not feel hopeless when
you realize that systems are teaching students that not only does it not matter if you
do work at school, but it also doesn’t matter how you behave.
I would tell them about my quietest student, Isobel, and
how, on the day of our poetry slam, she stood up in front of the class and, in
a voice that was loud and confident, recited every word of Amy Gerstler’s
“Touring the Doll Hospital” by memory, and how all of us gave her a standing
ovation and ran to hug her afterwards, and how it made me think of the quote
from a character in Wonder by R.J.
Palacio, “Everyone deserves a standing ovation
because we all overcometh the world.” It was one of those weird moments where
literature and life and beauty crash into you together at a thousand miles an
hour and it knocks the wind out of you, but you look around and you’re alive,
more than ever.
I would tell them how my personality has changed under the
stress of the past five years. I used to be fun. I used to be a bright and warm
person who would go out of her way to help people or make them laugh. Now, if I
can manage to act like myself during the school day, the second the bell rings
I’m withdrawn, snappish, and moody.
I would tell them how this stress has started to overrun the
part of teaching I love so fiercely.
I would tell them that it feels like I have three choices: 1)
stay where I am, continue working hard and destroy myself, 2) stay and protect
myself by putting in less effort, or 3) leave and abandon a profession and kids
I care about.
I would tell them how much I hate all of those choices.
I would tell them that I’m not alone; that my story is all
too common, and that I know far too many teachers who have it worse than I do.
I would tell them about when I interviewed recently at a private school on the other side of town, and how it went really well and the interviewer said she wished she could scoop me up right then and there, and how I got back in my
car and put my head on the steering wheel and wept.
Why do I want them to know these things?
Certainly not for the glory. If I’ve learned anything in my
time as a teacher, it’s that the only heroes in this story are kids who go to
school and do their best despite the systems that are keeping them down.
I’m also not writing this for proof or validation that I
work hard. I don’t have anything to prove about my work ethic or value as a
teacher, to myself or anyone else, and this is not meant to initiate a game of
“who has it worse.”
I’m also not writing this to incriminate my school
administrators or my district. If I thought the problem was confined to my
school, I would not be sharing this publicly. The problem is nation-wide.
No. I’m writing this because I care about what happens to my
students, and other children like them in Title I schools across this country
whose needs are not being met, and who are learning harmful lessons from the larger
systems in place that are supposed to help them. I am writing this to give
others a picture of the type of learning and teaching environments that are
being created by these systems. I’m
writing because it’s 2015, and far too many children in this country are still
receiving a lower quality education because of the neighborhood into which they
were born.
I don’t know what to do about it. I have some ideas, but I don’t
have nearly enough knowledge of policy to even know where to begin. All I know
is what I and others see at the front lines every day, and I just know that it’s not working—for students or their teachers.
This is what I would tell them. I may have burned out in the
process, but I will never stop fighting for these kids, their families, or the
teachers who care about them.
Love,
Teach
(Any names of students have been changed in this post.)
