Fish with Fur: Natural Selection of Teachers
About five years ago I read Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform by David Tyack and Larry Cuban (Harvard, 1995). It’s a great historical overview, written before the Dark Times, and I recommend it.
The thing that still sticks out most for me from that book is their argument that education reform, small- or large-scale, cannot be successful without a great degree of support and compliance from teachers. Ultimately, we are the ones who run this place. We don’t get to decide where we’re going, but we’re flying the plane. You need us.
We wanted to go to Las Vegas, but you’re making us go to your aunt’s wedding in Syracuse. Well, guess what, asshole…we’re not going to either. We’ll tell you we’re going to Syracuse. Oh, yeah…and you’ll believe us. But really we’re just going to fly this thing out of gas over the Andes and one of us is going to end up eating the other one.
Tyack and Cuban were right. If reforms are to work and teachers are to do what the people who decide these things want them to do, teachers have to be on board. If they aren’t happy, they won’t go along and it simply can’t happen without their buy-in. But there is an important unstated assumption in this argument. The assumption seems to be that teachers, for better or worse, will stick around long enough to be able to thwart any changes they don’t like.
What Tyack and Cuban didn’t count on is that teachers might leave or be removed from the profession en masse rather than go along. They hadn’t considered the possibility that any reform effort could possibly be so broad, unpleasant, well-funded or persistent as the one we are seeing now.
The result is that the reforms are changing the demography and character of teaching. The organism of the teaching profession is adapting in a natural selection-y sort of way; changing itself to survive in the changing circumstances of its environment. Teacher satisfaction is sinking like a stone. Teacher turnover is greater and the profession is becoming younger.
What’s gained might be measured in energy, enthusiasm and smarts. Teaching is attracting a larger number of highly motivated, extremely bright young people, in particular through programs like Teach for America. An influx of hard-working smart people is certainly not in itself a bad thing.
But what’s lost, through attrition and disillusionment and atrophy, is the experience of veteran teachers. If they are not able to immediately adapt to the New and Unproven Model of Everything, they are presumed to be of little value. They know it, so they select themselves out. If they can’t leave, they stay and work less well. They don’t do their best work because nobody works best when he knows he is not valued. They certainly don’t become the effective and valuable mentors they might have.
At my school, the veteran teachers don’t even bother learning a new teacher’s name for two years because they knew they probably won’t be sticking around. And they began to envy the younger teachers who could afford to walk away from a shitty job. The older teachers also tended to keep their heads down out of fear rather than assuming their role as informal leaders and elder statesmen and women in our school. They did not want to draw unwanted attention to themselves from above; even when they saw things being done that clearly didn’t make sense and confused, intimidated and demoralized younger teachers. At our school, the teat of sustenance and vengeance was at the top and nowhere else. A giant, humorless, nasty whip-cracking nipple in pumps.
In addition to older teachers leaving if they can and otherwise disengaging-in-place at their schools, we have the near certainty that the young, smart, driven teacher probably isn’t ever going to be a veteran teacher. Two and through. Maybe she’ll go 5 or even 7 years. But my sense is that not many people go into teaching anymore thinking that they will make it their career. And most of the ones who think they may make a career of it will burn out sooner.
The institutional memory and experience of the teaching force will continue getting thinner. In time, the only teachers with many years of experience will be those who thrived during the Dark Times. Everybody else will continue coming in for two and five year rotations. Do we want that?
I think some people do.
But what if, on our evolutionary journey, the organism of the teaching profession has gone down some horrible dead end of a shriveling twig on the evolutionary tree? What if we’re turning ourselves into something like a glow-in-the-dark rabbit or a fish with fur?
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Now that I think about it, that might be the state motto of West Virginia. (Connor, can you back me up on this?)
Mr. Teachbad
ps: I’ll be making my selection of winners from the contest a couple weeks again in the next couple of days. I’ve been busy. You can still play if you want.
What’s up with the dig at WV?
Let me go on record as saying that I love West Virginia. We got a wild hair up our ass about 7 years ago and bought ten acres of land in West Virginia where I take my kids camping at least a couple times every year. Last year we went on vacation in West Virgina and white water rafting in the New River Gorge. My wife’s boss throws a huge party every October in West Virginia. I went to the strangest bachelor party ever in West Virginia. (Mike and Frank, can you back me up on this?) West Virginia is actually pretty awesome. But I love stereotypes way too much. Sometimes I piss off blacks, Jews, or midgets; sometimes West Virginians. Probably never all at the same time. But it’s all in good fun. I don’t mean to offend, but it’s just gotten too damn easy. Which makes it funnier; to me, anyway. (Thanks for reading to the end.)
You forgot, “Well, shit,” at the beginning of the West Virginia slogan… (I’m a native, it’s okay.)
I read an article awhile back about the head of public schools in West Virginia. Apparently he traveled to Finland to study their school system. I’ve heard some of the things he implemented worked well, weren’t edu-trendy, and made sense. (Are there any West Virginia teachers on here that can attest to that? I moved a few states away, so I don’t have first hand experience.)
Over 20 years teaching and I am finally planning my escape. I still feel I’m going reluctantly. I have knowledge, experience and good ideas, but I’d like to be able to pay for my son’s college and when I look at what I’d be earning in the next 5 years I feel that staying would be a betrayal of my responsibility to him. And NO I do NOT want to go into Administration! It’s truly sad that teaching is a dead end job.!
Good Article!!
Elder teachers [in another time they were called O.W.L.S.-Old Wise Leaders] at least here in Australia, are let out to pasture because new young bright/ or not/ young teachers are easier on the school budget. Here there are many staff on short term contracts, so no assurance of an on-going position at the end of the year.
Age discrimination is rife…experience not valued… it’s all driven by the bean counters. Sigh….
oh yes! so true. Not being valued and actually feeling like an endangered species at times, I will be making my retirement exit in a very short time.
I tear up a little when I think of leaving some wonderful kids behind, but life is short and it’s the only one I’m going to get so … Thanks to pensions, careful saving and investments, I can go without worrying about $.
All my good teaching stuff (20 + years of great lesson plans, files, digital flipcharts, wall posters — all are going to a young teacher who *does* appreciate what I can teach him and has been a great team-teacher with me.
I’m passing on my “stuff” and giving him what advice I can. But I’m not staying around for the horrors that are coming next fall. This O.W.L. can smell it on the wind – and what’s coming is not going to be pleasant. I’ll be watching, but it’ll be in the safety and comfort of my home.
But really we’re just going to fly this thing out of gas over the Andes and one of us is going to end up eating the other one. This may be my favorite sentence that I have ever read online. Bravo, Teachbad! And a fine summing up of the State of Public School Reform.
Oh so true. As usual. What particularly struck me was your mention that those few who DO go into teaching planning on making it a career will burn out sooner. That is exactly what happened to me. Unlike most TFA recruits (I was a Miami Teaching Fellow), I did actually see myself staying in the classroom for the long term. I remember people asking me about that my first couple of years and I always answered that I liked it, that sure, I could see myself making a career of it. I made it 6 years. By the time I started looking for another job, I was almost to the breaking point where I felt like I would rather die than stay one more year in the classroom. Not the kids’ fault. Just the system’s. There is only so long one can go being treated like a child, talked down to, belittled, degraded in the media, only to find a similar lack of respect from students and parents and even less from administrators. No, thank you. Something’s got to change or everything is REALLY going down the tubes…for good this time.
Jennie,
You’re on the money with everything you said (and of course, so are you Teachbad!)
Like you Jennie, I thought for sure that this was my career. I finally fount it. I’m so lucky. Sure enough, by the time I woke up and was thinking about leaving, I was at my wit’s end. Pay me $5 an hour to sweep floors in Pathmark and I’m there with a smile! Also, as you said, I too was so sick and tired of being treated like a child. The “profession” being media-bashed every week was quite annoying as well.
Hey Teachbad, you mentioned: “A giant, humorless, nasty whip-cracking nipple in pumps.” That “thing” seems to have a lot of twin sisters because it’s what was running the schools I worked at as well.
My strategy: Show up to meetings, smile, give the appearance that surely I will utilize all the pie-in-the-sky education strategies being pushed that week. When I get to my room I resume doing what works for me. I don’t short change the students, but I sure as hell don’t kill myself trying to appease the fuhrer.
Good answer.
This…exactly!
I have a whole building full (24, we’re a small school, and that’s the way–uh-uh, uh-uh–I like it) of teachers just like you! Thank God, it’s the only thing that keeps me coming to work everyday.
I made it 6 and a half years.
I started like a sprinter, worked like a dog all year, and just barely made it to June. Every year, I would take off the day after school ended and do nothing. The next, I would start working on my lesson plans. By the end of summer, I was charged up, Gung Ho, and looking forward to the year. Every year I was slapped in the face by the reality that the kids didn’t care and my principal was so far over his head that he couldn’t have seen the surface with a periscope. Every year, I barely crawled across the finish line.
By my last year, my desire to excel was gone. I was worn out, used up, and squeezed like a sponge. I felt like the guy in the Ray Bradbury story, Skeleton, whose bones were sucked out. I no longer had it in me to try to do my best.
After having been nominated for my school’s Teacher of the Year for the previous several years, I told the principal I didn’t wish to be considered. (I think this secretly pleased him, as if to be honored by one’s peers was a Bad Thing, and to withdraw one’s self from consideration was somehow noble.)
Not surprisingly, nobody in the School Board cared when I resigned. I wasn’t even asked to do an exit interview; they just didn’t give a hoot.
Teaching is the only thing in my life that I couldn’t make respond to hard work.
I’ve been in the trenches 6 years. I have the least seniority, get laid off first, and teach what no one else wants to do. I am willing to try. I want the best for the kids. My department is full of people that have been phoning it in for at least the past 5 years. They’ll have to find another whipping boy. I’m done after this year.
Good for you Scarlett!
We all want/wanted the best for “our” kids. Unfortunately, the system has the worst intentions for us teaching “professionals”.
Not fair at all.
Those who are still teaching may want to consider leaving before this becomes you:
Well , thanks for the reminder about the cell phones. Frankly, if I can’t tell them to shut up, then I’m all out of classroom management skills. He seemed fine to me!
Why in the FUCK is NO ONE is talking about the behavior of the students!
I was wondering the same thing. Those kids were baiting him!
Maybe you’re new to the blog. We’ve had plenty to say about that. I’m sure it will cycle back around.
nah…Mr. Teachbad, I’ve been around your blog awhile
Teaching stress actually made me physically (mentally?) disabled…so I was ‘forced” to retire…my husband retired after being sent to teacher jail (the rubber room) after teaching 24 years because he tried to stop a psychotic principal from doing some really bad things.Oh – not new at all… We are refugees from the worst district on the planet, LAUSD
Where was UTLA when your husband needed them? Oh, probably in bed with the District…
This has nothing to do with your post, but as teachers, I’m sure you’re used to off topic answers.
Here’s an actual email I just received from an actual NC legislator, in its original state.
Discussion question:
Given the evidence of this email, are current students of the public education system any less capable of writing a clear, organized letter than the graduates of previous generations?
Dear Ms. White,
I wanted you to know that I received your email and although, out of respect for other members, I rarely respond to people outside my district, I am making an exception in this case, because of the misinformation about this bill. Indeed, it’s so far from the truth, that it has to be deliberate misinformation.. HB 34 changes no law, amends no law, and creates no new or different penalties. With one minor change made by the Supreme Court, the law is today what it was 40 years ago, and when this bill passes, it will be no different. I had our research staff look into this because people in my district were contacting me to see if what happened in Asheville was within the law. I learned that under state law, what had occurred was illegal and later learned that the Mayor and City Council had written a letter to the Citizen Times, apologizing to the people of Asheville and to the tourists, for the conduct exhibited in a park last August. In the letter they asked the Legislature to clarify state law to give them certainty as to the legality or illegality of what had occurred. My own law enforcement folks also were unsure exactly what the law is in this area and there are communities all over the state who have enacted ordinances to protect themselves from this kind of public behavior. So, this bill does exactly what its’ title implies. It clarifies the law. Research thinks that the confusion stems from an Appeals Court decision in the 70’s which narrowed the definition of private parts to exclude the female breast. Suddenly women could go topless, that is until the Legislature, Democrat by the way, came back and changed it. They later did make an exception for breast feeding. That has been the law since the 70’s. In 1998, the Supreme Court had the last, so far, say on this subject. In the State v Fly decision, which interestingly enough, was a case on mooning, the court ruled that showing one’s buttocks was not to be considered indecent exposure, and that buttocks were not considered a private part. However they gave the definition of private parts as those organs of excretion and of sex. They did keep the exception for breastfeeding. They affirmed what had been the law up to that time, with the exception of one’s buttocks. HB 34 takes the court’s definition, which is THE law of NC and puts it into statute for all to see. Therefore all of us are clear on what the law is and is not. This bill does no more than that.. I think that laws should be clear and concise and dislike those that are not, which puts us, the people, at a disadvantage. Remember too, that enforcement of the State’s laws are within the purview of the DAs. They decide who to prosecute and for what reason. Again, whatever the penalties are for an offense in this area are not addressed by this bill, which creates no new law. I have enough on my plate as it is. I took it on in response to questions by my constituents. It is a simple, common sense solution and is much ado about nothing.
Rayne Brown
District 81
Representative Rayne Brown
Room 633
Phone (919) 715-0873