Teacher Appreciation

 The first week in May is always called Teacher Appreciation Week, and there are festivities.  The appreciation we receive from grateful parents who entrust us with educating their children is a bit overwhelming, but we appreciate that.  This week, for instance, the parents of the kids sent in a ton of food - we had potluck on Tuesday, pizza on Thursday, and the mother and uncle of one of my students - she is Greek-American - brought us in quite an impressive breakfast spread this morning; the waffles and extra-sagey sausage patties alone were worth that.  Later today, I got a large card from my students also with notes of appreciation on it, including some from students I didn't expect - it definitely lightened my mood somewhat today for sure, and I will save that like I save a lot of other memoirs I have received over the years.  As much as I don't feel like I can take another day of what has been a tough year for us here, I also know that there are many roses in the thornpatch too and I see that with my kids everyday.  The thing I always tell myself is that if I can impact only one of 80 students I teach over 4 classes, I have done my job.  I find out in retrospect I touched the lives of more than one, and that makes all of this worth it.  However, this is where I hasten to say something a bit harsh, and I don't direct this at the students, the parents, or my colleagues who are also teachers - I direct it at school leadership.  In our school in particular, the leadership is often not as supportive of their teachers as they should be, and that may be a large factor as to why two-thirds of the current faculty (myself included) will not be returning next year. For professional decorum and also to keep some confidentiality standards in place, I will not name my school or its leadership, but I have a somewhat harsh critique of what goes on there that many don't see except maybe us.  Let me try to address this as delicately and succinctly as possible.

Our school is private, Catholic, and part of a larger network of similar schools across the United States.  The trademark attribute of this particular network in general and our school in particular is the fact that they have a 4-year work study program that places students one day a week at local employers where they gain experience and build professional skills.  In all honesty, it's actually a great idea, and when I talk to others about my particular school, I always mention this as one of the positives of it.  However, while the flagship school in this network is by and large a success story (it is in another city), the model has some things that haven't been completely thought out as they should be.  For instance, take the demographic of the network schools - the huge majority of them are in urban centers, and they are equally divided by student population between Black and Hispanic students.  In itself, that is fine, and minority kids should definitely be exposed to opportunities that can help them.  However, many of the network schools have missed two crucial elements in their educational theory.  First, the majority of the students (or at least a significant percentage) are not Catholic; this creates a problem for a school that has a Catholic identity, and as a Theology teacher at this particular school it often ties my hands from actually teaching the subject matter the way it needs to be taught.  Likewise, a significant number of the faculty are not Catholic either, and some who are unfortunately also possess an incorrect conception of what being Catholic means.  As a result, some weird political philosophies and religious ideas get entangled in the mix, making this as a Catholic school really no different spiritually than its public school counterparts.  The second issue this school has is a discipline problem - as many of these kids are minority students, it creates two problems.  First is entitlement - the "victim mentality" of some demographics of students makes them justify having horrendous behavior in class, and the students at my school have been known to curse out teachers, loudly disrespect us, and when these issues happen we often don't have any backup from the leadership to take measures to curb such behaviors - you cannot run a school like that.  Secondly, the students love to "play the victim" with teachers they think they can take advantage of, and the principal, vice-principal, guidance counselor, and dean of students all take the side of the student over a teacher trying to establish discipline in a classroom.  We are often instructed by the vice-principal in particular to write them up with a school-specific discipline slip, but nothing is ever done about that - when the vice-principal was asked about this, he basically said that he wants a "paper trail" to "cull the herd" at the end of the year.  The flawed logic behind this is profound, and one would think that immediately dealing with negative conduct and behavior would be a way to curb it and maybe help the student learn that consequences follow actions.  As a result, a sort of dismissive attitude exists among the students that they can get away with anything, and indeed they do.  This creates a number of stress-related problems for the teachers, and many of us dread waking up the next day to come to work knowing what we have to deal with.  Many of them also don't even do assignments - one student even brazenly crumpled up a paper assignment and threw it in the trash in front of me, and I gave him a failing grade on that as a result.  Also this year, another student actually assaulted a teacher - the teacher was fired over it, which I am still trying to comprehend - and it is not uncommon to see students pretending to go to the restroom and then skipping class.  Again, they know they get away with it.  In all honesty, when I was told my contract wasn't going to be renewed for another year, I had perhaps two of the best nights of sleep I have had in almost a year - you shouldn't have to feel like that potentially losing a job, but that was how I felt.  Thankfully, the vast majority of students are not like this, as many of them are actually good kids.  However, that significant percentage of troublemakers (and the majority of them are unfortunately part of one demographic) are sizeable enough to make things extremely difficult for any teacher, and to survive in such an environment, you learn quickly to have a strong set of cojones.  These kids can be like sharks smelling chummed waters with a teacher they perceive as weak, and they will sniff out and exploit any weakness they find.  So, how has the leadership of our school dealt with this, especially during a week that celebrates teacher appreciation?  Let me explain that.

As mentioned, we received relatively little gratitude from our leadership aside from some platitudes - mostly what we got was from others like the parents, the students themselves, and our fellow teachers. The leadership instead wanted to choke us with a lot of silly meetings (most of which contained redundant information) as well as stretching us further with extensive coverage of other classes.  Let me explain the coverage system for classes this school has, which in itself is not perfect by any means and was not thought through enough by those who instituted it.  For many schools - public and private - there are often a reservoir of substitutes who can fill in for teachers who need to take time off, and they come often from either a pool of prospective candidates or a certain number of people hired to do that specific job.  However, this is not the case at the school I work at!  When a teacher calls off, often what happens is that a teacher who may not have a class during that "code" (class period) is volun-told to cover the class by the assistant principal, and often that teacher gets stuck in a class where the students are a different grade level and the teacher is not familiar with them.  On specific work-study days when a grade level is doing their work-study assignments, the teachers for those classes become fair game for coverage, and we all dread looking at that damned coverage sheet when it is posted at 7 every morning.  The vice-principal too is not the brightest bulb in the lamp, and often he will double-cover classes, assign other teachers who have regular classes "by accident," or he just focuses on the name of a certain teacher and targets them for any coverage he sees - it is as if he looks and says "oooh, we can stick this teacher in 5 coverages today!"  The impact it has on teachers it that it chokes us with more responsibilities so we cannot do effective lesson planning, and the coverage system is like a punishment for teachers when their colleagues need to take off a day or two.  On one particular occasion, the vice-principal did a very boneheaded move when he scheduled myself and another teacher to cover a third teacher's classes, but all three of us were in Connecticut at a retreat and were actually sitting at the same table there having breakfast - we had a huge laugh over that one!  It is stuff like this that has contributed to a huge turnaround in faculty there in recent years, and the one thing I thank God for is that I won't be there for the mess they will likely have next year too!  Of course, in all honesty, I don't see a long survival rate for this school though, because the facts speak for themselves and there is no way a school like this in the condition it's in can be sustainable.  If I were a gambling man, I would wager that within a couple of years this particular school will close its doors for good, and I have others who agree with me.  There is a possibility that a "hail Mary" pass may be gifted to the school and it survives, but it will be a miracle of God himself if that happens.  Again, the facts and statistics don't paint a positive picture, but we'll see. 

Any rate, that is the reflection I wanted to share today, so I will leave it there until next time.