Bitter Apple

A former colleague of mine posted the following article on her facebook page:
"Teaching Ate Me Alive"
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/15/teaching_ate_me_alive/

They are the bitter musings of a disillusioned LAUSD middle school math teacher who recently left the profession.

There were several parts that reminded me strongly of my brief and overwhelming time teaching at an urban school.  I can relate to this guy in the intensity you feel while you are there.  Enough happens in one day to fill 6-7 blog entries...if you have the strength to type at the end of the day.  I found one archived entry from that year that contained three words:  Worst Day Ever.  That's all I had the strength to type that day.

In an urban school, you are bombarded by angry people all of the time.   Kids are screaming and cursing at you because you try to get them to work, parents screaming at you because you failed to get their kids to work or because you tried to get their kids to do work, administrators having "meetings" with you because you can't get kids to work or send the kids to the office too often for screaming, "fuck no" for the 20th time you ask them to open their book.

Actually, by the end of the school year, I was seeking therapy to deal with the stress of the whole situation.  My coworkers were sympathetic and very supportive, but it seemed that they had a particular knack with the kids that I had yet to gain.  Looking back, I think it was simply that the kids didn't trust me.  They knew that I would probably quit after a year like so many other teachers.  And despite my situation, the other new teachers were struggling in far worse ways than me.  Control in my classroom was often lost due to 1-2 people erupting every other day.  It was almost always regained by the end and I took GREAT pains to stop it from happening again (literally 2-4 hours on the phone with parents after school, meetings with administrators, logging issues, grading EVERYTHING).  For the others, it was chaos classroom from day 1 to day 108.  But in the end, I lost the battle.  Because I ended up leaving that job after one year and they stayed.

A part of me regrets leaving that school.  I know that I would be a much better teacher today had I stuck it out another 2-3 years.  Trial by fire churned out teachers that shined like sword-of-knowledge-wielding archangels.

On the advice of my entire family, therapist, and feeble sanity, I decided to leave.

Everyone warned me about LAUSD when I moved to LA, so I went the private school route.  It turned out to be the best decision for me.  I don't think I could've handled going back to urban teaching just yet.  Who knows, I may find my way back.  Or I may never look back.

So in a way, my brief and troubled life as an urban teacher was that chunk of apple that lodged in my throat and put me to sleep.  Maybe someday I will find the courage to break out of the glass casket and return again.

A Crisis of Faith

Growing up in the church, I learned about a moment that occurs often in the life of young Christians.  It's a type of rite of passage for those who practice their faith based on blind acceptance of Sunday School lessons.  This is called a "Crisis of Faith".  When they occur, the young Christian begins to doubt their beliefs and even the genuineness of their own devotion.

In Ed. school, I learned that teachers also go through a crisis of faith.  Usually around the fifth year, there is a spike in teacher turnover.  Usually at this time, teachers are facing burn out or a fizzling of their passion to teach.

My fifth year teaching was the hardest of my career.  I was teaching for the first time at an urban school and facing large class sizes, universal student apathy, and fiercely defensive parents.  I can't tell if the pain I felt then was any sort of crisis of faith.  I think I was more concerned with surviving the year than reflecting deeply on my role and passion for my profession.

In my time teaching, I have gotten numerous positive reviews.  Administrators, colleagues, and students have all affirmed my methods for pedagogy and valued my opinion.  But now, for the first time, I am struggling with an administrator that doubts most of my methods and decisions in the classroom.  It is disconcerting to say the least.  His doubt feeds my own doubt and I sometimes feel tortured about my own insecurities.  It hurts too.  Hurts deeply to know that I may have failed at the profession I have invested so much time and love into.

Students and colleagues still affirm that my classroom is relevant, meaningful, engaging, and useful, but conversation after conversation with this administrator somehow manages to destroy all that in my mind.  It makes me wonder if I made the right choice after all.  If after all of this time doing this, I had somehow become a bad teacher without knowing it.

There was one colleague I knew once who read all the literature, did countless hours of research and conferences, employed a variety of engaging and effective teaching strategies, and was hated by her students.    On paper, everything pointed to her being a great teacher.  IN her own mind, she was a great teacher.  She worked tirelessly, like at a hamster wheel, to do what a good teacher does.  But in the end, it all meant nothing because her students didn't buy it.  There was something soulless about the way she employed those techniques that gave the content an unnatural pallor that was a turn off to students.  I fear that my teaching might someday become that.  A soulless bag of tricks.  OR has it become that and I didn't even realize it.  Like that colleague.

I have met teachers with 20+ years of experience who are my idols.  The craft they employ into this profession is so perfect, so relevant, so elegant, that I wonder if I could ever aspire to be that good.  Is there a way to overcome this crises and move on to a stronger, better classroom?