Mistrust

Had a department meeting this afternoon, and I'm left with something simmering that just doesn't feel quite right.

Why is it that we teachers walk around with a default mistrust of the administration at both the building and district level? Much of the meeting today--though the laughing felt positively cathartic here in the last few days before spring break--consisted of basically bashing the administration. So our district literacy coordinator wants to come meet with the department--why did we laugh about that for what seemed to be a good five minutes?

I suppose that in difficult times, like when districts across the country are faced with impending budget cuts that essentially lead to Sophie's choices (cut teachers or cut programs or which totally necessary program can we get rid of?), it's difficult for teachers to maintain trust in the people who are making big decisions that may affect our lives drastically. We are afraid that the worst might happen. It's far easier to direct anger and mistrust at our administrators than to trust that they are operating on the best intentions but are often put in impossible situations where there's no way they could make decisions that would keep everyone happy.

The truth is that even in the best of times without impending budget cuts in the schools where I've worked, the implicit mistrust of the administration from the perspective of the teachers is palpable. And I've never totally understood it. It think we can all do a better job of trying to understand the full complexities of the situations that challenge our schools rather than vilifying the administrators who have to make the tough decisions in the face of those complex and often impossible situations.

These are the reasons why I myself never want to be an administrator. Well, that and the fact that I know that I feel most relevant with both feet firmly rooted in the classroom.

Seems like I should say something here about teachers' unions. Oh my. I have always been a member of my local teachers' union, but I've always had very mixed feelings about it. The worst I've seen of teachers' unions perpetuates an us-vs-them mentality of total and complete mistrust of the administration. The worst I've seen of teachers' unions protects ineffective teachers. The pictures my teachers' unions have painted of my schools' administrations have often contradicted my own experiences with my administrators, which have been largely positive through the years.

But on the other hand, we teachers are often asked to do more and more, with less time and no additional money--and unions have achieved fairer treatment in school districts for many teachers through the years. I see clearly why they are there--so despite my concerns with teachers' unions based upon my experiences with them, I will always belong. They play an important role in a system that is essentially a clusterf$@&.

What I mean by that is that the American Educational system is too big, too entrenched in persistent ideas about what it means to do school, too underfunded (I could go on...). It's a mess. Sometimes I feel so frustrated by the enormity of the problems in our system that it seems that nothing besides striking the entire system down and building it up again will ever be able to achieve real, meaningful change for our students.

But then I remember why I do what I do. I know that in my own circle of influence, I can make a difference. I can attempt to make school meaningful for my students. I can try to effect change in my school. I can find like-minded teachers who will sit with me in our tiny offices as we lunch on the leftovers we've brought from home and imagine our ideal visions of our classrooms and schools and actually talk about how we can move toward those visions. I can find school leaders I can trust and believe in to help us enact our visions.

And the thing is that I know those school leaders are out there in the ranks of our administrators, but if the default view of the administration is that it is always up to something nefarious and selfish, how will we ever get anywhere toward real and meaningful change? We teachers enact this view of the administration in the way we talk about our administrators when we are beyond earshot of them.

Our words represent what we think. In the words of one of my trusted school administrators, words are things. The words we use ultimately define the things in our lives. We can choose to keep talking about our school leadership with the negative words we often use by default, or we can seek to better understand the complexities that confront our schools and aim to first have a good-faith belief that our administrators are acting on what is best for our students until given some concrete reason not to trust the leadership.

Enough for now.
Signing off
M. Shelley

Where's the time?

As a commentary on the life of a teacher in the midst of grading sophomore rewrites, helping seniors through big research papers that are due next week, proctoring state achievement tests, preparing for an all-day Saturday meeting on revising state standards, trying to work through dissertation revisions...

I have not had time yet to write in this blog.

But I'll get there.

M. Shelley

An interesting week

We had one of those weeks last week that seemed like it just wouldn't end.  A late night at school, and just being plain old busy took its toll. Yet in the midst of that, I also had a week of having some really amazing conversations with colleagues. 

Note: while this post was sitting here doing absolutely nothing as a draft, my partner beat me to the trigger by posting on the lack of time. We return you to your, now redundant, originally scheduled post.

The point is, none of the conversations were planned or scheduled, but they produced some amazing ideas about teaching. We are having these conversations continually, but it always feels so haphazard, so last minute. When I do get to translate some of these great ideas into my teaching (and I do try), I don't have the time to really reflect on how they impact my students learning. It's hurry up and get to the next class, next meeting, next whatever, with a never ending pile of papers waiting for the in-between moments. I know plenty of people have demanding jobs, that doesn't bother me. But don't we want our kids to have a bit more?

Teaching is often, though not entirely, a performative job, at least in the context in which we are working (big high school, too many students in the class). Where is the built in time to think? Shouldn't we be doing that? 

The dean of a nearby  college of education, in an article appearing in a forthcoming book, pointed out that the other two performative professions, acting and law, have ratios of preparation to performance far higher than ours. Actors will spend hundreds of hours preparing for tens of hours of performance time (the ratio increasing the more professional the troupe). Lawyers will spend thousands of hours, working in teams, so that one of them can stand fro some hours in the courtroom. In my working day I have 255 minutes of class time, and 153 minutes of non-class time. There is also 35 minutes of passing period time, which for me is talk to students run to the bathroom time. So thats about 4.5 hours of working with kids in class, and about 2.5 hours to do everything else- plan, grade, meet, conference... No built in time to work with colleagues or collaborate, which are the most productive development activities we know of. And lest ye think my day sounds short, I average about 10 hours per week outside of school (read- unpaid) continuing the planning and grading, often much much more (unlike the lawyer I get no bonus for working harder, and unlike the actor, there is no fame for getting good at my job- believe me). Many weeks its much more than that. I am not complaining (well, maybe a little), I just want the time to figure out how to do my job better. But, in an effort to do all the things we are asked to do (which my partner just listed), we never get to the good conversations about teaching and learning. Bummer.

The flip side is that I work with some really amazing people, and we all know that we have the potential to do some amazing things. If we can just get this crazy system to make some room for us to actually be teachers.

Trying to find time to think...

F. Scott

Another Introduction

From M. Shelley
I guess you could say that we wanted to start playing around with writing about the ideas that we often struggle through in conversation, and thus, this blog was born.

I'm in my 13th year in the business--the only business that I have really ever known in my adult working life. That means 11 years in the high school classroom in three different states and five different schools if I include my student teaching semester. The other two years were full time graduate coursework for me, where I supervised student teachers and taught methods classes to earn my keep at my university. The graduate degree is still plaguing me as I try to finish my thesis along side teaching high school full time.

I have taught in a wide variety of settings: urban, suburban, semi-rural. And even though each of these settings brings with it a unique set of challenges, there are some things about this job that have been universal for me: I love what I do and I know there is nothing else I'm supposed to be doing, even though it exasperates me at times. The joy comes in dealing with the students. The frustrations come in how everything else often gets in the way of providing an educational experience for each student that will enable him or her to thrive as a human being.

(Hopefully F. Scott and I will remember to focus just as much on those joys in this blog as we do on the frustrations.)

Hello from F.Scott

Ha! First Post.

Well- this will be by way of an introduction. We have, for reasons that will perhaps become obvious, chosen to be anonymous here. We both wanted a forum in which we could discuss the very strange nature of our professional lives, present some thoughts, perhaps spark some thinking. We also wanted to be free to say what we really thought. As in most professions, we all do a bit of self editing as we go through our daily lives. In the politically and socially charged world of education, this is even more so. I hope that here we will be able to address directly that which we do not feel able to address in our offices, departments, classrooms and districts.

I have been teaching in the classroom for about eight years now. Before that I had a professional life quite different from this, though I have always worked with people, often young people, and the general dynamics and skills that inform teaching have always taken center stage in my work life. I never thought I would be a teacher though. I had to take a rather circuitous route to get here. However, now that I am here it is clear to me every day that I was built to be a teacher. Unfortunately, I also wonder every day if I the job I am doing and the way I am often asked to do it is sustainable, functional, and even more if I am really serving the kids that come through my classroom door. 

Where this blog might take us is a big unknown right now. If it serves as a vehicle for larger discussions, more thinking about how we educate our children, what our society wants of itself- then it will have achieved far beyond my ambition. After that- who knows?

Starting hopefully...

F. Scott