Last Thursday I posted the following on my personal Facebook page: “The last straw has finally hit. This school year is it. And then I’m gone.”
People were curious about what the last straw was. By the time I was ready to post again, the situation had changed somewhat. I then posted: “Update: This may sound trivial, but since some of you asked what the last straw is, here it is: the copy center. I always said I could teach as long as I had utilities/AC, payroll, internet, facilities… and the copy center. We got an email telling us everything we were going to copy needed to be double approved and that we’d need to not make too many copies because there are limited funds. Most things I can ignore, but this would directly impact my teaching. I am a careful curator of texts for the just the right moment in my teaching. I need copies. It is a professionalism issue and a censorship issue, and it seemed like an actual assault on my way of teaching. Fortunately, the email was withdrawn, and I think I’m okay at the school level now. But I am not the only one who was/is ticked off about this issue. I have had a fantastic first week of teaching, so now I’m back to wavering. Thanks to all of you who sent your support and encouragement.”
I did indeed get a lot of support, which I didn’t expect so much of so quickly. Of course, many people were rooting for me to finally retire and be free of the whole mess and many were mad and upset that the system was finally so close to chasing me out.
What I’d like to write about here, though, is all the other straws. I supposed an issue with the print shop seems trivial in many ways. But what made it different was that it seemed like it would finally interfere with how I teach. And when I said it was the last straw, the idiom was apt. Because there were a lot of other straws.
My teaching career didn’t begin in ease and order. I had very difficult students, as I have written elsewhere. But what I did have was freedom. I was able to deal with those difficult classes because I had the autonomy to invent ways to do it. I could choose what texts to read (with the help of the copy center). I could choose what writing assignments to give. I could pace things and order things in a way that was tailored to meet my students where they were. I could focus on authentic literacy. In reading that meant no one-right-answer questions, but questions and answers you could defend. In writing that meant students were able to write about things they cared about. I was able to create activities that would engage students and get them to think differently. I was able to look at where my students were and imagine how to get them where I wanted them. There were no standards and no high-stakes tests. I made lists for myself: “What do you want them to be able to DO?” Even though I was often in despair about their behavior, I was completely immersed in trying to reach them, to not only make them better readers and writers, but in helping them see how literacy could improve their lives.
Ten years and one school later, in 2004, I was district teacher of the year, awarded for my creativity.
During those ten years, the straws began to fall on my back. Standards arrived, along with high-stakes tests linked to those standards, and school grades linked to those test scores. The curriculum narrowed, but I tried to keep it wide open. It worked. My students had excellent scores – especially in writing. So I was fine, even though teacher had been redefined as Quantitative Learning Gains Facilitator.
But two years after being TOTY, the straws began falling more frantically.
First came a standardized curriculum, Springboard, and a curriculum map and pacing guide to go with it. It was supposed to be teacher-proof. No more thinking about teaching, supposedly. Let others do your thinking for you. I kept doing my own thinking.
Then the straws started falling faster. Merit pay for test scores. Tenure went away, which didn’t hurt me directly since I kept it, but it was a blow to the profession. Our district took away salary steps and my salary began to lag. Everything began to become more and more about testing. VAM was introduced, tying your evaluation to your students’ test scores, which you as a teacher don’t really have control over. If a student doesn’t really try on the test, can you help it?
Springboard went away, but the standardization remained. I had to hide the creative teaching I had been awarded for. They no longer wanted creative teachers. They wanted compliant, unthinking teachers.
Then came the censorship. Having to ask for permission for every text you teach (supposedly). All books being under suspicion. The threat of felony charges if an inappropriate text found its way onto your classroom book shelves.
More straws. Writing stopped counting toward the school grades, so no one cared about writing any more. I was literally told to not worry about writing so much. All they needed to do for the writing test was string quotes together. Writing was reduced to four isolated weeks on the map.
We are asked to treat students like data points and push them to score higher. We’re told to pay less attention to students who might not make gains because they won’t help the school grade. Everything is supposed to be benchmark-aligned, even though sometimes you need to teach non-benchmarked activities to motivate student to succeed on benchmarks. Actually the curriculum becomes even narrower, because not all benchmarks are tested. You are supposed to just focus on the students and benchmarks that will allow the school to make testing gains and raise the grades. Teaching is no longer about students. It’s about statistics.
Every aspect of teaching that I love and that I was once rewarded for has been stomped on by Orwell’s boot in the face. What used to be a good teacher had now become a non-compliant teacher. And what used to be a lazy teacher was now a good teacher.
So when the message came that they were messing with the copy center, trivial though that may sound, it really was a last straw kind of thing. If you have not had a career that you love so much, a job you can’t wait to get to each day, a job where, as Frederick Buechner put it, “your great joy meets the world’s great need,” perhaps you cannot comprehend what it is like to see that job systematically dismantled over a span of 20 years. It’s very stressful. And depressing.
I have yet to really let the forces of standardization in my room. Tomorrow we will be discussing the power of words and reading three brief poems that will ask the students to dive deep into what it means to know things, what school is for, and how to view the purpose of education.
I got those poems copied at the copy center. Apparently that situation is cool. The final straw has been removed, so I’m back to wavering about whether this is my last year.
But understand, what has happened over the past 20 years has made it more and more difficult to stay in this profession, not easier. People give lip-service to wanting great teachers, but no one listens to teachers.
Will there be a new last straw. I don’t know. But I’ve started to think that the next straw that falls won’t leave me ready to quit.
It may get me ready to fight.