Teachbad in the Middle
I’ve been teaching for six years. I know I’m not going to retire as a teacher. But what am I going to do? At a certain point you sort of get locked into this…but that’s another topic.
What I want to talk about now is comfort. New teachers are busting their asses, worried all the time. Too nervous to even start smoking yet. Not comfortable.
Veterans, those who have been around for at least 9 or 10 years, have either quit smoking or just don’t give a shit anymore.
Patience while I home in on this idea…
I’m in the middle. I quit smoking, but I’m still always on edge about the fact that I have to have some shit ready to go every single day when I go to work. Every day I have to get to work before 8:00am and I have to have three hours of stand up and audience participation activities ready to go. It’s maddening. I don’t lose sleep over it anymore, but I did. Every day is somehow full of surprises, yet utterly predictable. You either have to do the same kinds of stuff over and over and recycle and recycle or drive yourself crazy.
At any moment one of our young and humorless administrators could walk in for an unannounced observation. I wish they would just call them “surprise observations.”
Shit…this post isn’t going well….I’m not the nervous little teacher of one or two years, but I’m also not the self-assured veteran who can just roll with anything. Do I want to be the self-assured veteran? Do I want to just get to know the system so well that I can leave at 3:30 and not have to worry? “Hey, fuck it…I’m making $75-90k and there is no chance of matching that anywhere else because I’ve just been doing this for the past 17 years. Now it’s easy.”
I don’t want an easy job. And I don’t want to just work and wait until my job becomes easy.
Even if I wanted to be a VP, it now seems that those positions are reserved exclusively for lap dogs under the age of 30.
This job sucks.
(The above disorganized rant was partially motivated this disheartening but resonant comment.)
Mr. Teachbad
lol @ the $75-90K at the 17 year step
Hey Mr. Teachbad,
I’ve been teaching for over 20 years and I still love it, but I can understand the frustration with having to do more with less and less. I’m showing teachers how to earn some extra income on my site. You should stop by. Teaching should be a job you love, and using your experience and expertise as a teacher to make some extra money makes it a little easier to go to work.
http://www.extraincomeforteachers.com
Thanks,
Sam
I feel ya Mr. Teachbad…almost 8 years in the game now and I feel like I either have ADD or some other similar nervous twitching/tic condition. Did I mention we are being evaluated using 2 different assessment tools (one which requires a binder filled notebook that we were told to go home and read before we went to bed) and merit pay is coming our way? Maybe its just this ass backwards, non-unionized state that I live in. The last people to know are always the teachers and the students.
Yeah too funny. I hate it so much. I want to get out and pursue my art soon.
They are pushing all the unique people and free thinkers out of the system. The only people left will be the drones. And the students will suffer.
There you go. Do what we say. And nothing else. We know everything. Don’t think. Just do. And do and do and do.
Hey Mr. Teachbad,
That was my comment made in the middle of a sleepless night as a sore throat took it’s toll on top a totally shit day with no control over kids roaming the hallways wrecking classes. Where the admin are I have no f***in idea……but these hall roamers are a regular event. That day I suppose because I was getting sick I went ballistic with them and then mulled over the whole education mess late into the night especially after reading your comment.
To put it in perspective…I’m in a particularly rotten situation with at-risk kids and a dumped on us underperforming nasty principal. I don’t think all teachers face this mess.
One of the good things about being a truly old, old timer is that you get a small degree of immunity from the admin and you hone excellent at ad lib behavior. I hate watching what they will do to young teachers especially when they show any degree of insecurity….and god forbid make a mistake. Is there another job in the world that can drive you to your knees in insecurity over mistakes than teaching?I think not.
Now all this said….I really do love teaching. And I believe it’s a calling that’s unequal to any other. You can see that in the faces of students every day. I utterly hate what I see happening to our schools. And i hate seeing young vibrant teachers (I suspect you’re one) working on any plan they can to find their way out of this mess they put themselves in. Our best and brightest simply will not stay in the classroom. My generation could be the last of the career teachers. Maybe it’s a good thing to constantly turn over staff with fresh energy. I have my doubts though. However the research does show a decline in effectiveness after around 10-15 years so as I said maybe it’s a good thing.
I still stand by my comment that if you decide to teach you better have a backup plan in place. And that’s a real shame.
Ellie
one more comment…..it is easier after teaching forever and we to pick up a bigger paycheck. I would say for most 75K is kinda the top though. Tomorrow I’ll get up and start grading, then start trying to put together lesson plans to fit the newest ideas that “surprise observers” will be looking for. So yup even us big paycheckers are working 60+ hours a week. AND it’s damn boring mindless work all designed to make it “look” good.
Hello, Ellie-
Would love to have a face-to-face with you over a beer or two some day…
The thing that makes me sick is that I really do love teaching as well. Maybe I need a different school. But these folks at my place are preprogrammed machines who do nothing but find fault…I am halfway convinced that the achievement gap is mostly my fault for not being rigorous enough and having expectations that are not high enough.
If I would just be bold enough to give more difficult work to the kids who have already demonstrated that they can’t do the easy stuff, then we would be set. If I just wish harder and collect more data I might fix it.
Meanwhile, I need to find time to grade these tests and plan for next week..after that maybe I’ll have time to call some disconnected cell number of the grandma of some dipshit kid who isn’t going to come to class if I call his grandma or not.
Grandma…if you are reading this…please tell your dipshit grandson/daughter to come to class. It’s important.
Oh boy a beer would be nice….even nicer would be to actually do try it over lunch. You know… during the work week…haha…like my husband sometimes does at his job!
Heck even lunch at school would be nice….I have worked through my lunches for years and years.
Seriously….I hope you do keep up this blog. There are huge, huge numbers of teachers who feel the same and you are excellent at putting it to words.
A few years ago I really started following educational policy (well as much as I have time to without destroying health and marriage!). I don’t get what the ultimate goal of no child left behind, and now race to the top, is. Leaving teachers out of the process makes no sense. And now it looks like we’re going to drive them out in droves ……really is the ultimate goal to improve education? I doubt it.
My husband thinks that the goal is to create a national curriculum that a robot could teach. You hand a script to any college grad and they know what they have to go through every day. Ayieee….maybe he’s right. Of course merit pay will introduce the cost savings benefit needed plus the turn over of young teachers will insure no one ever gets to where I’m at ….ahhh…the big bucks of 75K. (Which actually should be 77K but we have furloughs of our planning days.)
Which introduces another topic I can’t believe I would think much less say…..you sound too bright to stay in teaching. I would hope though that you continue as long as you can. For one, I’m positive you make an impact on kids. And two, you’re honing your skills just in case someday someone actually wants to hear what a bright young smart teacher sees in the classroom. What are these things that drives out the very people we desperately need? Yup hone those skills….no one can do it except someone paying their dues day, by day, by day in that classroom.
Okay that’s it….now I’ve got a big ole stack of tests to grade and then onto the new piece of shit templates we were given this year so we could hand in daily lesson plans every Monday. Got to have lots of details so the “Surprise we’re here!” evaluators can see we’re up to exactly what we said we’d do.
Take good care this weekend and hope you have some fun!
Ellie
Why do I wake up every day and feel surprised by the flaming bag of dog shit on my front porch? And why the hell do I keep stomping on it to extinguish it? I keep waiting for the surprise announcement that I’m “being punk’d.” Tonight, in lieu of paying attention to my family, I’m answering emails from students who were not at school today, or yesterday, or both, or more, and a couple from students who will be missing upcoming days for vacations and diddling themselves. I’m reading the litany of excuses about why the homework doesn’t apply to this student or that student and the list of students who have 504’s, IEP’s, letters from Mommy or special dispensations from the fucking Pope, when all of the sudden it dawns on me that I should figure out a way to care as much as my students do. This would solve everything. I’ll show up some days and sit/vibrate/sleep until the bell rings and then leave and get my list of excuses ready for the next day. Once I shirk my responsibility long enough to no longer be able to succeed, I will be able to vegetate guilt-free and wait for each year to end until one day I get to walk out of this room forever and wait to go ever-so-gently into that long good-night. This should be my plan, my goal, my objective, or whatever the term du jour is. But then I remember that there is that one kid in third period or that other in fifth period who came and asked me one genuinely insightful question with a look of interest in their open eyes and I fall for “it” again. I stay up late, grade, care again, and stomp out the next morning’s bag of shit as if it were the first. Geeze…I hope I never become cynical. Keep up the good dissention everybody.
It’s a relief to find teachers who feel the same way I do. This is my 3rd year in the game. Hope to make it to 25 or 30? It seems everyday I doubt myself. Am I doing my job as well as I can? Do the administrators have the right to keep piling on the work? Are my 6o hour weeks not enough? Is it my fault some kid is not doing anything in my class after an unlimited amount of warnings, phone calls, detentions, referrals that lead to more warnings? I don’t know. I feel that I am good at teaching but I’m not that good at babysitting. You know, dealing with the kids that sleep/don’t take notes/don’t participate/don’t do homework/constantly disrupt my class. Praying that my department chair/administrator doesn’t walk in and see anyone doing any of the above things. I would feel like a failure. Why do I always dwell on the failing grades in my class instead of the A’s? Again, feeling like it is my fault they are failing. Here’s to this weekend and the weekend after that and the one after that.
We offered our students an opportunity to provide feedback on the new “blended learning” for math. In which the teachers are reduced to parapros (presumably so they can be replaced).
So here’s the commend form one of my lads ( aged 16)
>>Honestly, hell (excuse my language) I think yall might as well fire all yall teachers due to the fact we are being taught by computers.. and the staff are sitting on there rumps so.. yea. thats how i feel.<>I think that is unfair. I never sit down in class.<<
I think the advantage of doing it longer is you realize nobody really gives a monkey's behind what goes on. The words, the posturing and chest-beating are irrelevant. Just keep 'em quiet so we can get money to pay the admin $100K+ a year.
Mr. Teachbad, I just found your blog yesterday and, in that small amount of time, it has already become one of my favorite sites…
Let me tell you how I know that being more “rigorous” or “dedicated” won’t make a difference to my students. I’m a special education resource teacher, and for the past two years now I’ve gotten kids who have had a certain resource teacher the year before. This teacher is a veteran who is known for going above and beyond. She’s a great teacher who, in many’s opinion, works too hard and dedicates too much time to her teaching.
Yet, for the past two years, her students received terrible scores on the state test and they have come to me still functioning well below grade-level with awful writing and reading comprehension skills. This is not to say she is not doing her job; it’s the complete opposite. But if she can’t get these students to be proficient on the standardized test, what chance do I have? I admit, although I consider myself a good teacher and my evaluations show it, there’s no way I’ll ever have the extreme work ethic this other teacher has. Though of course, when these students don’t pass, it’ll come down on the teachers. They can throw all of the programs and data they want at us, it’ll never make a difference.
Thanks, Clock-
It’s true…good isn’t nearly good enough.
Teachbad
Clockwork
The results of a new study on merit pay was released last week. The teachers volunteered for up to $15,000 if they could raise test scores. The few scores that went up were minuscule and only in 5th grade. So you have teachers who are committed enough to volunteer and who wouldn’t want 15K. Essentially the teachers said they were working as hard as they knew how. Since their scores stayed the same as the teachers who weren’t offered the incentive perhaps everyone was workings as hard as they could.
And a new book just came out by some big wig ed researchers who took the research apart that forms the base of race to the top. Only 15 of the studies were peer reviewed. The rest were just chest pounding studies from various organization with political agendas.
(I’ll link to both at the end)
It will be interesting to see if this matters at all the Obama admin in Arne Duncan’s almighty push to have merit pay and almighty national tests. We’ll be piloting both in my state.
Don’t I recall Obama saying he wanted research based decisions….guess it all depends on how you define “research”.
Here’s the links
merit pay didn’t work-
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/09/first_controlled_study_teacher.html
Book that blasts the reform research
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/research/book-blasts-research-base-for.html
At least it helps to feel we’re not alone and that’s heartening………
Ellie