vxprof1954@icloud.com

Letters from the front

Dear Parents,

On the grandest of scales, everything I ever needed to know about Public Education, I learned watching a situation comedy that frequently explored the angst of our human condition.

“M*A*S*H” introduced me to the concept of triage in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. Derived from the French verb trier (to sort), triage is a medical protocol designed to cope with the prospect of too few doctors caring for too many casualties on the battlefield. Different from what we currently experience as triage in a modern Emergency Room, trained army medics make life-or-death decisions about which patients might be saved with the resources at hand. Occasionally, the most severely injured are left to die if the heroic measures required to save them might ultimately cost more lives among the less-seriously-injured casualties forced to wait too long for their care. Multiple acute arterial bleeds from numerous shrapnel wounds to internal organs? Sorry, soldier…even attempting to save you will cost the lives of these three less-severe trauma cases over here.

Welcome to life reduced to the existential absurdity of intolerable working conditions adversely affecting the desirable outcome of a maximal effort to save every wounded soldier. Imagine yourself simply administering analgesics and condemning one broken body to death in order to facilitate saving others. How can medical professionals function under such conditions and maintain their sanity? Regrettably, however, this heart-wrenching process has become a metaphor for the modern system of public education.

Today, if teachers are to survive a career in the classroom they must become adept at Educational Triage. Never furnished adequate resources, time or circumstances to reach every student, teachers must all too often cut their losses by occasionally giving up, albeit reluctantly, on students who do not exhibit sufficient resilience to thrive in the classroom. Not enough of a self-starter to crack your book and get your assignments done? Sorry, student, the hours spent arriving at minimal participation will negatively impact the many classmates ready and willing to perform.

Much like the doctor in a battlefield hospital, teachers confront a long roster of  students that is, at best, daunting. Not only is the caseload overwhelming, but far too many of the students on their rolls present perhaps insurmountable challenges. Hence, teachers are frequently forced to choose the interests of the many over the interest of the one. These decisions are not the result of malice, sloth or incompetence. They derive from judicial duress. In the state of Maryland, a judge ruled -and was upheld- that class size “is not a working condition” and therefore “non-negotiable” in the collective bargaining process. Specious legal reasoning may stand up as a narrow interpretation of the law, but it certainly withers under the scrutiny of reason and experience for classroom practitioners.

“But surely,” you might exclaim, “our children are far better off than someone lying wounded in a field hospital!”

Truthfully, too many of our children can be tallied among the walking wounded, because the community to which they belong does not currently exhibit the will to lift them from their circumstance and prepare them adequately for the information age.

Neither the county nor the state has demonstrated sufficient resolve to furnish the resources that might transform schools into the one safe place where at-risk children can feel connected in this age of rampant alienation and dissociation. Children are the disenfranchised victims of societal indifference to their plight.

Were your child in legal trouble, would you hire a law clerk who had yet to pass the bar exam? Were your child ill, would you even consider a visit to an unlicensed practitioner? No, you would be looking for the most qualified professional you could find. How has it become acceptable anywhere in America that children can spend more than 1,100 hours each year with inexperienced or marginally-qualified educators?

The demographics suggest that it has become tolerable because it is most consistently the problem of poor children of color and poor children of recent immigrants. We see schools with 100 percent participation in the free/reduced lunch program; coincidentally, those schools also have higher percentages of inexperienced educators. For some reason we have not sufficiently pressured our political leaders to institute the changes necessary to achieve real equity in those schools.

Like it or not, the issue is funding. Affluent jurisdictions almost always manage to fund their schools; they grease the political wheels; they buy influence. Jurisdictions with soci0-economic challenges are seldom able to accomplish that feat.

If a community aspires to no more than the educational equivalent of meatball surgery, then our mission has been nearly accomplished. However, if teachers are to do more than sort those who choose to learn from those who appear unwilling, then we must find an effective and equitable manner by which to fund completely our most challenged schools.

Perhaps you’ve heard the old inspirational saw often trotted out to encourage educators. Two children are walking on the beach. They find hundreds of starfish washed up on the shore. The first child throws one back in the ocean. His companion wonders what possible difference saving one starfish could make. The erstwhile triage specialist responds, “It made a difference to that one.”

A poignant parable… unless your child is among those left as detritus on the beach.

Sincerely,

A beleaguered teacher

 

[Updated from an early Commentary 5/6/99 in the now defunct Prince George’s Journal. Despite enacting the Bridge to Excellence Act in Maryland inspired by the Thornton Commission’s findings, staffing ratios remain approximately 20% lower than our neighbors.]

vxprof1954@icloud.com

Hopelessness Makes Political Refugees of Educators

A colleague once shared that she was about to leave the teaching profession.  She was a mid-career teacher who just could not take it any longer.  Too much work-centered heartache had taken its toll.  At the point in her career where she should have been hitting her stride as a teacher, she said, “This teaching gig is for the birds.”

“Teaching is not for the birds,” I quipped. “Birds don’t get up early enough!”

It was nice to share a knowing chuckle.  Both of us were early risers who accomplished our best work done in the hours prior to sunrise.  It was during her quiet time before her children awakened where she organized lesson plans.  My papers were corrected over coffee prior to the arrival of the morning newspaper.

Permit me to ask an indiscreet question.  How long it would be before you grew weary of being compensated for only seventy percent of the hours you worked?

What will persuade you, my compatriots?  What will convince you that this society dedicates insufficient resources to the education of children?  What tales of trial and tribulation will reach into your heart and outrage you enough to compel you to immediate political action?

Nationally, over 50% of teachers surrender by year six. Locally, between 10% and 12% of our teachers have been leaving annually for years now.  Some leave to teach elsewhere.  Some leave for other professions.  Changing jobs is not something employees do for amusement or vengeance: Changing employers is listed among the top five sources of stress in the modern world.  So, what has driven educators to become a new class of migrant worker?  The reason for these departures can be summed up in two words: job dissatisfaction.

Compensation is not the sole driver of teacher turnover, although competitive salaries might help retain some in the profession. Working conditions can drive teachers to curse the day they chose their career.

Teacher flight is about…

-class sizes that border on the absurd, and being told that class size is NOT a working condition.

-numerous non-instructional duties that steal from time for planning instruction and assessing learning.

-swallowing a sandwich whole at lunch so that you can administer a make-up assessment while simultaneously calling a parent during your so-called half-hour “duty-free lunch”.

-obsolete materials in the library or book room, and stone-age audio/visual devices in the age of laserdiscs and multi-media presentation.

-changing instruction to use the overhead projector in order to save paper only to be told that there is not enough money for the 600 watt lamps required to run the projectors.

-out-of-pocket expenses for classroom decorations and supplies.

-the absence of support personnel.   

-discovering that “wish-lists” are all too appropriately named. 

-watching children sit in undersized and broken furniture.

-a roof that leaks water and windows that let in the cold compelling gear for inclement weather while indoors.

-trying to talk louder than the four fans you had to purchase in order to push hot air around a 100+ degree classroom in May, June or September.

-no paper, soap or hot-water in the restrooms.

-wondering when, if ever, you might find time to use that restroom.

-being without a classroom for four years because you teach from a cart.

-not having access to your classroom during your planning period for four years because an itinerant cart-based teacher is there.

-losing precious planning periods to substitute for colleagues because absolutely nobody wants to be a substitute.

-utility rooms reincarnated as classrooms.

-students late to class because of  transportation problems while teachers are directed to stress the importance of punctuality as a life skill.

-bureaucrats and business folk who suggest that teachers need more tasks to accomplish.

–losing weeks, perhaps months, of instructional time each year to bureaucrat-mandated, irrelevant testing designed to hold the education community’s collective feet to the fire for socio-economic circumstances totally beyond its control. 

et cetera… et cetera… et cetera.

And lest it be omitted, you really have not lived until you have performed the juggling act of teaching two grade levels in the same classroom at the same time, or two different courses in the same room at the same time.  Yes, this may help with staffing & space concerns, but it’s a safe bet that the originator of this “strategy” was not a classroom-based educator attempting to convey knowledge to the next generation.

The sum of such annoyances leads teachers to abandon the classroom. Individually, any of these conditions might be tolerable.  Considered collectively, they breed hopelessness which incites despair. Coping with despair ignites the instinct for self-preservation, both personal and professional. The two options are fight or flight, and flight is frequently the easier alternative.

Fortunately, interventions are within our reach. Most can be resolved by adequate funding for our schools and equitable distribution of resources.

 For every teacher that resigns outright, how many more will lack the skills to cope with challenging circumstances? How many more will eventually take those first small, unwilling steps toward diminished expectations? Who will replace the teachers that leave and what will be their qualifications and experience?   These invisible, unknowable statistics should terrify each of us.

Teachers want to teach.  At least initially, all teachers believe in the possibility of entering a room full of young people and inspiring them to learn.  What intrepid souls!  What unfettered idealists!  Yet, here in the wealthiest nation on the planet, less than one-third of a career suffices to grind unbridled optimism into dust.

[Adapted from an editorial page Commentary in May, 2000 in the now defunct Prince George’s Journal in May, 2000]

vxprof1954@icloud.com

“Underfunded schools: Push rock up hill; start over”

After having the temerity to outwit the gods and deny them their vengeance, upon his death Sisyphus was condemned in the afterlife to an eternity of rolling a boulder up a mountainside. In his landmark essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus claimed that Sisyphus was superior to his fate in the moments of respite after the boulder crossed the summit and rolled back to the base of the mountain. Camus further suggested that, in those moments of rest before the next bout with his eternal labor, we must imagine Sisyphus as joyful.

The logic of that last proposition can prove elusive, but the fate of Sisyphus effectively demonstrates the existential conundrum of each individual forging meaning out of the perceived absurdity of meaninglessness. As Sisyphus purchases a few moments of repose by his grueling labor, he becomes the ultimate existential hero. He conquers the absurd by finding a purpose in a situation that appears hopelessly futile.

The Sisyphus myth is an apt metaphor, albeit an imperfect one, for the fate of teachers today. It is imperfect because Sisyphus discovers purpose in a futile task while teachers often discover futility in work most meaningful.

The latter seems infinitely more cruel.

Teachers, at least those committed to optimizing educational opportunities for children, are the spiritual stepchildren of Sisyphus. Their mountain takes three decades to climb and the boulder seems to grow inexorably by accretion. The constants in the professional life of teachers are requests, directives, and even longings, to do ever more for their students, accompanied by the illogical corollaries that fewer resources will be allocated and less time will be allotted.

At least Sisyphus knew how he had offended Zeus to arrive at his fate.

Teachers scratch their heads and wonder how their neighbors can stand by and silently witness what is happening to those charged with awakening young minds. Teachers also wonder how their neighbors can acquiesce to a community bent on funding conditions in our schools that promote little more than intellectual Darwinism for our children.

At least teachers do not labor for all eternity. Teachers can exercise free choice and walk away from this sublime torture called teaching at any time. Most do just that within six years. But for many, that act of surrender is a worse fate than pushing the boulder could ever be.

To no avail my parents always advised me to be careful when I wished for something. Like many children I did not heed them. All I ever really wanted to do was teach.

Now, it seems that teaching is just about all I do. My participation in outside interests has declined precipitously across my years in the classroom.

The martial arts are out. Lobbying elected representatives and fighting for school funding takes precedence.

Music is out. Once a constant companion, that old guitar in the corner has not been touched in years while my computer keyboard has nearly become an added appendage.

Sustained Silent Reading for pleasure is out. That never-ending pile of papers always beckons for correction.

Astronomy is out. Stargazing on distant mountaintops unfortunately involves remaining awake well past sunset after somewhere between eleven and fourteen hours have been devoted to my livelihood.

How has it come to this? That is a simple question. Teaching is a to-do list that grows by twelve items a day with only sufficient time to eliminate five, and three of those five items have nothing to do with organizing instruction or assessing its effectiveness.

According to Camus, the gods “…quite reasonably thought that there is no more terrible punishment than futile and hopeless labor.” Sisyphus, however, still has some small chance at hope. He can accomplish his assigned task and earn a momentary reprieve from his punishment. Sisyphus can still put his shoulder to the boulder, acquire purchase, and achieve the summit. It would be a far worse punishment if the boulder never moved.

Compare that to the lot of teachers. Ideally, our goal is to make a scholar of every child. Failing that, the teacher’s mission is to inspire children to make maximum use of their talents. Not having the means to accomplish these noble goals leads to feelings of frustration and futility.

A normal day for a typical teacher comprises more than 9,000 teacher/student minutes. Nearly three-dozen children arrive periodically for a daily total of 270 minutes of instruction. If the instruction is to be dynamic, tack on 4 ½ hours of planning time. If teachers are to hold students accountable for their learning, marathon sessions of correcting papers must occur. The daily grind is interminable.

The non-instructional time of the contracted day is largely consumed by other-duties-as-assigned. Do not forget to be at your door before the school day begins and between classes. Do not neglect to be at your duty station. Prepare to stand in a long line at the photocopier as colleagues deforest the planet to cope with textbook shortages and obsolete materials. Watch those “quick” phone calls to parents become 45 minute planning-period-killers. During lunch, students come with résumés in search of letters of recommendation, or to make-up a quiz, or to seek help. It never ends.

Teachers are systematically denied the necessary time, resources and circumstances to achieve the desired goal of preparing children for this new century.

To paraphrase some homespun southern wisdom: sorry, but that rock just don’t roll.

[This is a slightly revised reposting of a 2001 Commentary in the now defunct Prince George’s Journal.  Things have changed for the worse in the intervening years thanks to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top. ]