9486 in the collection
Endangered teachers
Ohanian Comment: Funny thing: I worked in a very conservative district, and my experience was that people were scared to challenge me. Or maybe they just didn't care. In those days, as long as you kept those "tough" kids out of the office, you could do what you wanted. And I made sure to show up for hall duty. Never let them get you on technicalities.
The fact that I wrote a 10-page (legal sized paper) expose for the union each month didn't hurt. Administrators really didn't want to end up in those pages. The most popular feature was Dirty Linen, wherein I deconstructed administrative memos. Needless to say, the amount of mail clogging teacher mailboxes decreased exponentially, and when an administrator felt the need to write a memo, he could be seen consulting with an English teacher.
At the same time, I was writing for national publications--and annoying the hell out of my arch enemy, The Assistant Superintendent in Charge of Curriculum. That was her title and that was how I referred to her in national publications. As I have recounted in detail in Caught in the Middle: Nonstandard Kids and a Killing Curriculum, she did a lot of nasty things, things that hurt kids, but at least in writing the book, I got the last word.
What drove me out of the classroom was receiving a phonecall one day with the offer of a job as staff writer for a teacher magazine. I thought it was a great chance to put advocacy for children out to the world.
By Maureen Downey
Ex-teachers often say their resignations had nothing to do with falling out of love with the profession or tiring of the low pay and long hours. Many say they were ardent about teaching and fierce about wanting the best for their students and holding themselves and their schools accountable.
What drove them from the classroom was frustration over how they were required to teach and how the system conspired against the interests of students.
Maybe, they ended up teaching classes out of their fields because a principal needed to plug a hole fast. Maybe, they wasted hours in hollow, vacuous professional development programs that didn’t relate to their needs or were so basic as to be insulting.
In some cases, every whim of the central office was transformed into instant law at their schools because their principals were too cowed to practice "creative insubordination," as Barbara Christmas, former head of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, once described it to me. Every raised eyebrow from the superintendent led to lengthy staff meetings in which teachers were berated.
I've been thinking about the pressures on dedicated teachers in the wake of a column I wrote a few weeks ago about education jargon. In response to my observation that school officials wield "eduspeak" to intimidate parents, especially during Individualized Education Program meetings, several teachers sent notes like this:
"I am a special education teacher and I have sat through more than one IEP meeting where I found myself cringing at the way case managers, teachers and district supervisors talk down to parents.
"It is invariably to hide a truth of some kind, such as a mistake or a service that the district does not want to provide. Professionals like me are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
"We speak up and we are soon out of a job. We keep our mouths shut and we have a harder time trying to compensate for our students’ sakes."
In my experience, ornery teachers — the ones who speak up when they believe their students' welfare is at stake and who question the system — earn the label of troublemaker. They develop a reputation for not being a team player, of always seeking more for their students and classes than the system was accustomed or willing to provide.
In a new study on teacher turnover, four Georgia State University researchers interviewed 134 teachers at a large metro elementary school to investigate why teachers leave. The student body was largely poor — 88 percent of students had family incomes low enough to qualify for free or reduced lunch — and it was diverse. Fifty-nine percent were Hispanic, 23 percent African-American, 11 percent Asian and 4 percent white. In the previous three years, the school had achieved AYP, adequate yearly progress.
The study was unique because it was suggested by the teachers themselves, who wanted to explore the causes behind the exodus of so many colleagues over the years, says Barbara Meyers, chair of the GSU Department of Early Childhood Education.
A third of new teachers leave the profession in their first three years. At the end of five years, only 40 to 50 percent of new teachers remain on the job.
Each teacher's exit takes thousands of training hours and dollars with it.
The GSU study found that teachers who stay on the job credited positive relationships with fellow educators and administrators, a diverse student population and an environment that emphasizes academic student achievement.
Teachers who chose to leave their jobs cited tensions with their fellow educators and administrators over teaching philosophies and school policies.
One departing teacher told the GSU researchers that she couldn't understand why the administration complained about her unique teaching approach since she was making headway with her students, explaining, "I consider teaching as an art, and that's my style. If I have reasons to back the way I want to do things, and if my students are able to perform, then what is the problem?"
"People who want to bring radical forms of change are often the ones who are driven out," says Brian Lack, one of the GSU researchers and a teacher himself working on his doctorate.
"I have worked with plenty of people dubbed troublemakers because they challenged the status quo," he says.
While many reform models call for principals to be agents of change, Lack says, "That is not what you see. What you see is stuff coming down from the board of education and the county offices just being accepted as the status quo."
One of my children had a middle-school reading class in which the teacher decided to set aside the boring prepared texts and worksheets and let her students read and perform Shakespearean plays. (This was during a phase when middle schools were carving out time every day for reading, and teachers across all disciplines led reading groups.)
While students and parents applauded the teacher’s creativity, the administration apparently was less enthusiastic about her methods. A year later, the Shakespeare performances were gone.
And, a year after that, so was the teacher.
— Maureen Downey
Atlanta Journal Constitution
2009-07-06
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2009/07/06/downeyed_0706_2DOT.html
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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