Call of Duty<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Teaching has got to be the most\niconic of American professions. Other than the anachronistic Irish Cop walking\na beat in New York City, there\u2019s probably no other career less understood or\nunderestimated in popular culture. Just like film noir or Law and Order <\/em>enthusiasts, who might think they know what it\u2019s like\nto be a detective, everyone and their grandmother thinks they\u2019ve got the inside\nscoop on what it\u2019s like to be a teacher. Anyone who has attended public school\nor watched Little House on the Prairie, <\/em>thinks\nthey are an expert in education. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A couple of years ago I was\nconsidering retiring from the \u201cnoble profession\u201d. At sixty-two years old, I\u2019m\ngetting a bit too old, cranky and impatient with the behaviors of my students\nand more importantly, their parents. Unfortunately, I didn\u2019t start teaching\nuntil I was forty, so I didn\u2019t have enough years in to make my pension worth\nthe paper it\u2019s printed on. When my mother-in-law got wind of my desire to\nretire, she panicked and sent me some quaint Reader\u2019s Digest articles about\nteaching. The articles were pedantic and saccharine, an alternate reality not\neven remotely connected to the 21st<\/sup> century classroom. The authors\nof these nostalgic memoirs must have stepped off a movie set where school marms\nwore buns, lace and calico. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Just\ntune into any sit-com or Hallmark Special, and you\u2019ll find the caricature of a\nteacher. On the dark side, they try to\nhumanize us by turning us into comic buffoons continuously duped by smarty-pants\nteenage boys. If teachers are not\nportrayed as the butt of a joke, they are haloed up in a suit of reverence to\nthe point that it makes you want to gag, although I admit that I will sit\nthrough those Hallmark Card commercials with a box of Kleenex. What really makes me break out into\nhysterical sobbing though, is the simple acknowledgement that this work is\nimportant, that we matter, and that being a teacher is an act of courage that\nmakes a difference in the world. Those kinds of acknowledgements are too far\nand few between.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Americans\nhave a love\/hate relationship with teachers and public schools. On the one\nhand, we are demonized by politicians and those anti-government, anti-tax,\nright wing nut wings as being incompetent and entitled by our unions. On the\nother hand, there is something patronizingly na\u00efve imbedded in the idea that\nteaching is the \u201cnoble profession\u201d. \nWe\u2019ve all watched those movies where the self-sacrificing teacher wracks\nup points in heaven through simple deeds \u2013 giving a student that new winter\ncoat, slipping extra food into their empty lunch box, spending hours after\nschool teaching the dyslexic kid to read. And for the most part, in spite of\nthe syrupy music and sentimentality, these images are grounded in reality. I\u2019ve\nbeen that teacher, and many of my colleagues have been that teacher \u2013 giving,\nkind, and patient. But we can also be pushy bitches if that\u2019s what\u2019s needed to move\na kid forward. Sometimes it takes a little tough love to ferry a child into\ntheir life. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What\nthey don\u2019t show you in the movies is that we are overworked, highly stressed,\nbroken-hearted warriors who do battle every day in underfunded, underserved,\nand broken public schools with limited human resources. If you ask me, this is not a job that will\nearn me a special place in heaven. It\u2019s the job from hell! If you are a\nteacher, you know what I\u2019m talking about. Especially if you are a woman. How many times have you been asked what do\nyou do for a living? Perhaps it\u2019s at the\ndoctor\u2019s office, caf\u00e9, or a much-needed respite at the nail salon, while you\nare correcting papers, plugging in data for that time-consuming cover-your-ass\nevaluation, or working on report cards, and someone asks what you are doing, or\nwhat you do for a living. You smile back and say, \u201cI\u2019m a teacher.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Inevitably,\nyou get the familiar pat on the head, as though your avocation is some kind of\na time-filling hobby, \u201cOh, that\u2019s nice. You must love it.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In\nthese situations, I have to hold myself back from saying, \u201cWhat \u2013 are you\ncrazy?! When was the last time you\nstepped foot inside a classroom? 1890?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n No one in their right mind would go\nup to a soldier who has been deployed to Afghanistan for the fifth time, and\nsay, \u201cOh, you must love it.\u201d Yet we teachers get this all the time. It\u2019s not\nthat we don\u2019t love our work. As a whole, teachers are dedicated, thoughtful,\nand committed to their students. But I bristle whenever I hear the collective\naudience on Jeopardy say \u201cAww\u201d when a contestant announces she\u2019s a teacher.\nIt\u2019s as if a kitten just walked across the stage the way people get all gaga\nand nostalgic. It doesn\u2019t matter that\nshe\u2019s whipping the butt of the other contestants or has a master\u2019s degree. The\nmere mentioning of the profession initiates the same response usually reserved\nfor toddlers and puppies. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t mean to sound persnickety\nabout it. Folks are generally well-meaning when they assume that teaching is a\ncalling. But I doubt that they associate\nit with the same \u201ccall of duty\u201d set aside for those who serve their country in\nthe military. And yet it is a call of duty. I considered teaching to be my\npatriotic duty, a profession where I might possibly make a difference. In my\nmost idealistic self, I believed that I was furthering the cause of democracy\nevery time I set foot in that classroom. I didn\u2019t go into it because I\nparticularly like children. They can be mean little shits, but you learn to\nlove them anyway. And any teacher will tell you there are days when the school\nfeels like a war zone. You hear all sorts of analogies to war thrown around a\nschool. For example, teachers don\u2019t generally trust an administrator unless\nthey\u2019ve \u201cbeen in the trenches\u201d, meaning they are former classroom\nteachers. This war zone is clearly stuck\nin the past \u2013 like way back in World War I. Do we even use trenches anymore?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When I went into teaching, I was\nfresh out of the protests against nuclear weapons and marching in the peace\nmovement. I was idealistic and smitten with the ideal purpose of public\nschools, which, according to Thomas Jefferson, were derived to ensure that democracy\nwould prevail through an educated populace. \nI took my duty seriously, believing that my job was to teach students\nhow to think and how to be good citizens. Boy was that an uphill battle.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The American public has a rather\nschizophrenic relationship with public schools, given all the nostalgia that\nenshrouds the profession. While\ncelebrating us in books and movies, you also have an angry mob of right-wing\npoliticians who want nothing more than to do away with the whole system, and\nthe nuisance of taxation. Their goal is to privatize schools and get rid of\nthose \u201cnasty, entitled teacher unions\u201d. And what better scapegoat than teachers\nwhen it comes to blame for the failing public schools across America? This\nskewed assumption is obvious when you begin to analyze the school reform\nmovements of the last twenty-five years. Public schools, once the great\nequalizer for impoverished immigrants, urban and rural poor kids across the\ncountry, have become depositories for all the kids whose parents couldn\u2019t get\nthem into charter or magnet schools, or can\u2019t afford to send them to private\nschools. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nfailure of school reform and the movement toward privatization is a travesty\nfor American education. The assumption that schools are filled with dead wood\nteachers needing to be culled is a great distractor from the real problem \u2013\nthat the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Rather than\naddressing the real issue of poverty, bureaucrats have derived a \u201cgotcha\u201d evaluative\nsystem to nail teachers and under-performing schools. One-size fits all testing and the obsession\nwith data has only served to bog us all down, inevitably dumbing down the\npopulace along the way. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks\nto high-stakes testing and a data driven model which is even outdated in the\ncorporate world, there has been a mass exodus from public schools. I know of\nmany parents who have sacrificed a second income to home-school their children,\nbecause they are unhappy with the regimen of testing and preparing for the\ntest. We have suffered a perverse brain drain, losing our brightest and best\nstudents and most creative teachers to other professions. Who in their right mind, other than an old\nsoldier, would continue working like this? Budgets have been drained away from many\nschools, to pay the tuition for those who are attending magnet and charter\nschools. Teachers like I was, are working longer hours than ever, trying to make\ndo with fewer resources. Sometimes it\nseems like the only students left are the ones who need lots of help or have\nsevere trauma and emotional problems. My\nown darling little school had cut back on the school psychologist, social\nworker and speech pathologist. The very same school where I once ran a Talented\nand Gifted program with a schoolwide enrichment component has changed\ndrastically. The buzz and excitement of assemblies, invention conventions, and\nenrichment clusters has been replaced by dullness and defeatism. Now the school\nfeels unsafe, with students tossing furniture, standing on desks, and no\nauxiliary staff to come to the rescue. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In\na national environment where politicians are unwilling to address school\nviolence and shootings, and public education has been severely undermined, it\u2019s\nno wonder so many parents and teachers are jumping ship. Given the fact that I\nwas spending at least $100 a month on school supplies, snacks and water for my\nclassroom, I had to throw in the towel myself. Between the workload, behaviors,\nlack of resources and support, the only thing that was keeping me in the\nprofession was that call of duty.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Call of Duty Teaching has got to be the most iconic of American professions. Other than the anachronistic Irish Cop walking a beat in New York City, there\u2019s probably no other career less understood or underestimated in popular culture. Just like film noir or Law and Order enthusiasts, who might think they know what … <\/p>\n