When Idealism Attacks

You know, the only thing worse than random uninformed citizens who think teaching is easy and that teachers are well-paid is power-tripping administrators who think teaching is merely a matter of crowd control and data analysis and that teachers are idiots who need to be reminded to push in their chairs at the end of workshops on such tricky topics as how to take attendance.

I may have mentioned ten or twelve or a hundred times before that I love my job. What I meant was that I love the TEACHING part of my job: I love the hanging out with kids part, and I love the doing good part. I also love the advocacy part of my job; you can't be a good teacher without being the kind of person who reflects on what works and then advocates for policies that support or facilitate good teaching. You might be effective in your own classroom, but the title teacher -- at least to my way of thinking -- implies an investment in and passion for the overall process, regardless of whose classroom you're talking about.

It's the advocacy part, more than anything else, that kicks my ass. It's fairly easy -- although not in the way people who say teaching is easy mean it -- to walk into your classroom, close your door, and teach the children well (I'm simplifying. Some days just trying to do THAT makes me cry). But eventually you come out of your classroom and you hear other teachers talking about how they don't need to cover the Harlem Renaissance because it's not on the state test, or administators assuring teachers that their problem students will eventually drop out, and you feel compelled to remind people that that's not why we're here -- that teaching is about helping kids make meaning and instilling a love of learning, and that you do that with whatever fucking topic you can (bitches!) regardless of whether or not the state has deemed it important, that instead of crossing your fingers and hoping that problem students will drop out you should be trying to determine what the problem student's problem is and FIXING it, or at the very least fucking emphathizing with it.

I've been back at school for a mere three days now and I've attended a total of seven meetings. In my notes for each of those seven meetings, I've written somewhere "think about getting out of teaching." The first couple times I wrote it as sort of a silent sardonic response to something discussed in the meeting -- my oh-so-important obligation to confiscate cellphones, IPods, hats, COATS, and do' rags despite the fact that they almost never interfere with my ability to teach, or the likelihood that the assessments I've created for my class will soon be replaced with standardized assessments provided by central administration (and, incidentally, that those assessments will SUCK). But I'm up to seven "think about getting out of teaching"s in just 60 hours because. . .you know what? Things are FUCKED UP.

My department is short two teachers at the moment. (And, oh, by the way, school starts in five days. TOTALLY snuck up on us again.) We've hired nice, motivated, focused -- but unqualified -- long-term substitutes to temporarily fill these positions. From an administrative perspective, these are warm bodies. End of story. From a teacher/advocate/mentor perspective, these are warm bodies with potential who are going to be teaching kids and who need LOTS of help. And when I wasn't in a meeting, helping was pretty much how I spent my day. It's how my friend Steve spent his day, and how our friend Jess spent her day, and how our friend Mike spent half his day (the other half he had stupid football practice). Which means that none of us got anything done for US today, although we did attend a shit-ton of pointless meetings.

And this is how the advocacy thing kicks my ass. Because although you can't be a good teacher without being an advocate, if you spend all your time advocating you'll have very little time left for actually being a good teacher. And then you start getting crazy. Hell, Steve and I have already resolved to skip lunch tomorrow in an effort to catch up.

I needed to drop a few pounds anyway.

Plus I plan to make up all those calories (and more!) in Hoegaarden tomorrow. It's Cogan's Thursday! Which basically means that it's Thursday and I drag all my friends to my favorite bar (Cogan's) for some serious drinking. Cogan's Thursday is such an institution that when Jess registered for a Thursday night grad class, her husband looked at her schedule and said, "You're taking a class on Cogan's Thursday?" and Jess said, "Shit" and then promptly dropped the class.

That's how I ROLL, bitches!

Also how I roll is that my bulletin boards aren't done and I'm not quite sure what I'm doing on the first day of school. If you have thoughts on either feel free to stop by Cogan's after 6PM. If I'm not relaxing on the patio with a pitcher of Hoegaarden, I'll be in the back laughing while Steve totally kicks my ass at air hockey. On his quarters, hopefully. I need mine for laundry.