I didn’t just lose in the sense that we still use this model to this day (we do). I lost in the sense that I became “that guy.” I was the bitter, burnt out teacher fighting against progress.
Over the past month of writing, one theme I’ve uncharacteristically returned to again and again is the honest examination of my difficult relationships. I wrote about my father; I wrote about my hometown; I wrote about my son. It is a squirmy, uncomfortable process, less cathartic than I wish, but also more liberating, once I revise away my own bullshit. And now, I think I need to have an honest conversation about my relationship with teaching.
I’ve joked with our cohort about not being any good at teaching writing for the first 23 years of my career, but that’s not exactly correct. There’s just this recent stretch of years where I failed spectacularly. Prior to that, I think I was pretty good at what I did. I wasn’t amazing (I really didn’t know how to teach writing), but I did my best and enjoyed doing it. Then, everything changed. So, let me start with an apology to about six years worth of students who I failed miserably because, honestly, during that stretch, I hated being a teacher.
That’s 858 kids (I checked).
I’m sorry, gang.
When I started my career, the challenge of daily teaching was exhilarating. A delightful panic descended on my classroom each morning that first year. I knew I’d done my planning, but my limited knowledge of teaching meant that I had no idea what I was diving into every day. Still, the thrill of cannonballing into that pool, deeper than my experience, was my life jacket. Pure energy kept me afloat and, in due course, my craft improved. I’ve come to think that three years is the growth curve for teaching anything well. It’s in the third year that a teacher can finally say, comfortably, “I got this,” about a class. I was “in the zone.”
Then, life threw me a hell of a curve ball. My first wife’s death meant that the following year I was a rookie again, in a new town, in a new stadium, playing for a new crowd. That first year in Cincinnati I had three brand new preps and the panicky enthusiasm was back.
I threw myself into everything at my new school: teaching, coaching, clubs. I was all in. I’m not sure who said what to whom, but when the English position on our building’s “marquee” teacher collaboration opened up four years into my tenure, I was invited. I felt validated, thrilled, challenged, accepted. Those were the most challenging, noble, and collegial years I’ve experienced as a teacher. In the midst of this, in 2008, I wrote,
“One belief stands apart for me and is central to my continuing desire to work with children: the idea that education is the great equalizer in the United States. It is the one educational tenant that I believe all teachers must agree upon. Systems, methodology, and the law may change our approach to teaching and learning, but the fundamental goodness of free and fair public education remains, for me, central to the American Dream.”
I was privileged to put that belief into practice every day. Every day I collaborated with students and professionals in an open, cross-curricular exploration of the world. Of the fifteen hours I had with these kids each week, we spent at least three outside of the school building, engaged in field experiences that included museum visits, civic engagement, scientific field work, community service projects, facilities tours, performances and exhibitions. Everytime students were needed for district PR, we got the call and our kids shined.
If it sounds like I am still eulogizing Senior Honors Seminar today, it’s because, until last year, my professional heart was buried with SHS, both victims of the 2011 budget cuts and a narrow administrative view of what an education can aspire to be. Those colleagues are still my dearest friends. Those students have become doctors, lawyers, actors, activists, and teachers; their successes are my proudest moments as a teacher.
Some of the justifications for the death of SHS were, objectively at least, understandable. It was expensive to put four experienced teachers in a room with fifty students for half a school day, everyday. I get that. However, the open disdain of administrators who suddenly couldn’t see how what we were doing justified expense was the worst kind of betrayal. They couldn’t abide that what was hard to quantify was what made it most worthy. Whatever, the case, in 2011, we closed up shop and, having lost the fight, I found myself feeling bitter about the coming change because, for the first time in my professional career, I had to face the idea that change could be limiting too.
When I speak to friends about my job, I want to spin my classroom in a positive light, but it kinda sucks, to be honest. Let me explain. This whole ordeal fundamentally changed the way I see educational administration. They fairly quickly latched on to blended learning as the solution to the district’s budgetary woes. Rather than seeking better ways to teach kids, our budget deficits put an ugly new lens on “innovation”, distorting our administration’s view of what blended learning might be good for. Rather than blending good practice with technology, they used technology as an excuse to double class sizes, using technology as the bait. Suddenly I was by myself in classrooms of forty to fifty students, with access to technology and nursing a lot of anger.
Everyone, everyone involved from top to bottom, even the kids and parents, knew that the district’s decision to double some class sizes was financial, not educational. We just weren’t allowed to say it. Heaven forbid we should say it. I viscerally hated the company line, half-heartedly repeated so often to parents that I knew and respected, “This is the wave of the future. We’re preparing your kids for college.”
Bullshit! No, just no.
It was soul-draining; It was career-poisoning and for a while I fought the good fight.
I lost.
I didn’t just lose in the sense that we still use this model to this day (we do). I lost in the sense that I became “that guy.” I was the bitter, burnt out teacher fighting against progress. It became increasingly obvious that discussions surrounding blended learning weren’t discussions about improving pedagogy, but rather discussions about my continued employment…and, I got scared. I live in that weird, professional space where I have been at my job for so long that I can’t really afford to go somewhere else. I’m too expensive. This should be freeing, but it’s really a terrifying cage when the work becomes something that you find philosophically repugnant. But I have a house payment and kids of my own to feed.
For a while, I worked hard to find ways to lessen the impact of having so many kids in a classroom, but the best I could do was find ways to make the class manageable, survivable. I used every technology tool at my disposal, but slowly, over the course of a few years…probably three, I withdrew behind Blackboard.
“It’s on Blackboard,” I’d say. “Have you read the daily announcement,” or, “the notes are on Blackboard,” or, “the text is on Blackboard,” or, “the handout is on Blackboard.”
The teacher is Blackboard.
Many of my colleagues burned out on this model pretty quickly. A year or two later, the desperation and chaos spilling out of some blended classrooms sent those teachers to professional counselling, to other classrooms, to other districts, or to other careers. Catastrophic failure, real resignation of the spiritual variety, led to reprieve, but it required giving up in the classroom.
I own all of the bad practice I have used to survive blended learning, but I’ve never given up on my classroom. It wasn’t the content or my love of teaching that kept me sane; it was kids. I love being in the classroom with the kids; 45 is just too many. It diminishes the relationships you can build. I admit that I traded away good teaching for my sanity and despised myself and my job for doing it, but I did. Still, in all that time, my classroom has always had the appearance of function, and so I continue in this placement. Let’s not talk about how little learning occurs. My new administrators say, “keep up the good work.”
There is so little good work.
Which brings me to today…really, to about a year ago today, to be honest. You always wonder if things are meant to be. The Ohio Writing Project was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. Perhaps any good thing would have sufficed to fill my professional void, but the things I experienced here last summer filled me with excitement and hope because I found strategies to make my classroom authentic again. 2017/18 was easily the most rewarding professional year I’ve had since blended began. I rediscovered that familiar, frantic energy going into my mornings. Headed into year two, I can feel my place in that three year cycle I loved as a young teacher. I have some great, proven tools from last year that I’m eager to refine. Coming out of our four weeks, I have a much larger toolbox to use as I transition to making writing central to everything I do.
Most intriguing, I can see the broad outlines of this new philosophy in practice. There are pieces that are pretty firmly locked into place, not foundations, exactly,, but scattered bricks connected to others on this side, bare on the other. Many more ideas are currently in motion in my head, searching for their place in this emerging big picture. And, predictably, there are still some blanks that need filled in. I’ll figure those out in year three, when the thing really gets good.