Joel Klein has said more than once that he thinks no one should remain a teacher for more than ten years. Aside from the obvious prejudice against experienced teachers which this shows, I wonder what he has in mind for the individual who is beginning to become masterful at an intensely difficult job and has by that point also accrued a mortgage and begun a family?
Teaching experience translates to NO other profession. Though you've managed hundreds of kids, you are not considered management. Though you've organized a classroom and possibly a whole school organization, that isn't considered the same as handling an office and office supplies. You can't even necessarily qualify as a paralegal because you don't know the computer systems or the jargon. You've lived in a universe entirely a creation of the school system. At interviews, people will view you the same way they would someone who has worked at a factory installing a particular kind of car door. Except that even the factory worker has recognizeable skills which translate elsewhere -- an ability to execute instructions precisely and to work with a team on a prescribed schedule.
So, unless you were the kind of person who enjoyed or had the money to take a new job at entry level, your only other option would be to go to graduate school and take out loans for both school and upon which to eat. In New York City, it's impossible to get loans to cover the cost of our living expenses -- it's too much money. Plus, because you've been earning a salary which in other states would allow you to save, but here helps you to live in your own apartment and eat squarely, you won't be awarded grants or most other kinds of financial aid. At 32, you'll be a fairly old-ish candidate for Medical School, Veterinary School, and less so for Law or Business school. The odds are good that the only way to realistically re-train will be to go at night or on-line while you are still working. I'd like to see the teacher with the energy to work on something completely different and teach full-time. You'll have to go part-time - should you start re-training at year 4 or 5 then? How do you explain to your principal your sudden unwillingness to put in all the extra time you used to and that most new schools now ask for? You can start raising issues like "it's not in my contract," etc. Go ahead. At most schools, see what that gets you. I guess, if you end up in the Rubber Room, THEN you will have some of the energy necessary to re-train.
So, I get it: You work very above and beyond the contract for four years. Then, you start to limit how much you do this using something as spurious as the law behind you, and, in most cases (I have a decent principal, not most cases) you get an automatic pass to The Rubber Room. Since it takes years for your case to be heard, you use that time to start your part-time degree in some other field. When you go back to school (as you will because you can't really be fired for having been competent and just refused to say, stay three extra hours after school a day, unpaid) you raise the same issues again and get sent away again. You keep doing this until you finish your degree, and in fact, find a job in your new field.
That's the only way that a reasonable person would quit teaching after ten years, assuming he/she was competent. Get yourself into trouble, anyway, so you actually have the energy to do something else -- you won't be teaching. Assuming you are not like me and do not internalize the experience of being removed from your school and develop deep depression (and you do not let being placed in a room full of similarly anxious people get to you), you should be able to take a class or two afterwards or online.
Of course, the odds are good you won't have been able to do this at a top-named school as you couldn't afford it. So, you will have to hope that people will still remember you in your first-four-year incarnation and give you glowing references. Unless of course, they're also on the same ten year plan....
Only a lunatic would leave a job he/she was competent at under these circumstances. Now, that's another possibility -- you release people from mental institutions and dope them up, hand them a script to teach from for ten years and then take it all back and put them back. Some of them might not notice the difference. And since you don't give parents a voice in anything, there will be no complaints. You just tell the UFT that these people went on the Open Market and were hired. No one has the manpower to check...
No comments:
Post a Comment