Winter break was equal parts blissful, stressful, and fast.
It was blissful because I slept in most days and had nowhere I absolutely had to be, giving me ample time to rest and engage in my favorite hobbies (such as writing and singing). Also, Christmas happened, which is my favorite time of the year, and I got to share all of it with my son. It was stressful, though, because there was still so much to do. I had piles of grading to get through, lots of planning, and a huge amount of organization for my reading groups to sort out. I actually met with Kristin Stowe, my amazing Reading Academy instructor, at a Starbucks over the break so that she could help me work through ideas in terms of reading groups, and also work out a better behavior management plan (one that still incorporated my school's "rainbow" system, of course). I also caught a flu during winter break, so I slept quite a bit, which added to the stress of things I hadn't yet completed.
Mostly, though, winter break was fast. Seeing as how my weeks at work dragged so much and felt so long, I thought that winter break would feel equally long -- just in a much more satisfying way. Rational people, however, realize that this isn't the way time perception works (usually, by the time we're in first grade or so, we realize that an hour at the dentist feels much longer than an hour at Disneyland), but even my rational side didn't want to admit that winter break was going to fly by until I was hit over the head with that fact and could no longer ignore it -- meaning, of course, that the final Sunday of winter break came and I sat around, depressed, wondering where my break had gone.
I almost dragged myself back to school the next morning. Amy, too, was feeling the same kind of back-to-school depression, and we spent much of the morning in her classroom talking about it.
As low as I felt that morning, I figured that I could try to make the day a good one by taking it slowly with team-building activities and such, incorporating academics as the day went on. I thought it was probable that many teachers began the second part of the year that way. And after all, it wasn't like I needed to worry about getting observed right after winter break, so some time spent re-establishing our classroom culture was likely a good idea.
I was wrong about not being observed, though. Mrs. Lawrence came in to do a pop-in observation first thing that morning, the Monday right after winter break. I'm pretty sure my thought process at seeing her there was, Are you fucking kidding me?
After that first day, however, my instruction began to pick up. Kristin Stowe visited my classroom to model more small group lessons, and my new organized reading groups actually started working out better than I had originally thought they would. My classroom management wasn't good enough at this point to actually facilitate quality reading groups while other students were busy working hard within well-structured centers, but I had at least a shadow of success happening in my room.
Christy, though, didn't see as much success as she wanted to. "It's better," she told me, acknowledging that I'd improved at least somewhat. "But I'm still not seeing your vision come to life in your classroom."
My vision. Right. I had no real clue what, exactly, my "vision" entailed, other than getting through each day. And, thus, I was a Teach For America failure because my students were not passionate and urgent and eager to be in class learning the wonderful things that I had so painstakingly planned for them. I was not making permanent changes to the trajectories of these kids' lives, and I was therefore not doing my job.
Teach For America, you see, is heavily involved with a current trend ("current" meaning the year I began teaching, in 2013) of promoting the idea of "super teachers." Many schools are picking up on this trend, too, and so people hear much more about it these days. Clark County School District even began recruiting teachers as "superheroes," and it was a huge theme during the 2014-2015 school year. The idea is that a teacher should have the capacity to change the lives and forever impact the academic growth of every student, every day. The burden of whether a student passes or fails, whether they graduate or drop out, whether they become eager to learn or apathetic, falls directly on the teacher. This mantra fosters the idea that a teacher can transcend all other aspects of students' lives to ensure that each one is successful.
And, at times, those expectations are absolutely crushing. Because, as everyone knows, teachers are not superheroes -- we are human beings, only capable of so much. Do we try our best to make sure that each of our students achieves success? Of course we do, and we often spend a great deal of time figuring out ways to try and do just that. But we are not superheroes with super powers, capable of super-human tasks. But the cult of the "super teacher" would have you believe otherwise, and teachers everywhere are now getting very mixed messages. On the one hand, we're supposed to be super human and take sole responsibility for the very lives of each of our students. On the other hand, we still deal with communities, legislators, superintendents, and even entire districts that treat us as glorified babysitters, entirely untrustworthy non-professionals that don't even deserve a living wage. The cognitive dissonance that happens trying to balance the two messages can be intense.
And yet, many teachers try to live up to the "super teacher" standards set before them (I was one of them, as I don't like not being the best at what I do). Some teachers go to work hours early and leave hours after students leave, go to work on weekends and holidays, spend remaining free time in professional developments, go out of their way to be on a very personal level with each of their students' families -- they literally pour their entire lives into the pursuit of becoming a "super teacher." Teach For America thrives on this mentality, which is why they actively look for young, determined people who are willing to work themselves into the ground every day of their lives for two years. And they celebrate the ones who do.
America as a whole, actually, celebrates the ones who do. Movies such as Freedom Writers are all about celebrating teachers like this. That particular movie (based on a true story) follows a first-year teacher who worked her ass off to create what was, quite literally, a super classroom. It's an emotional story that makes people tear up at the thought of a teacher so good, so supportive, that she's able to change lives so dramatically. More importantly, it makes teachers determined to be that teacher. As a society, we celebrate the idea of super teachers and have begun to believe that every classroom can be a super classroom like the one in the movie. What's often ignored, though, is what happened to the teacher herself in that movie. She wore herself out, becoming depressed as her life began to unravel around her. She spent money she didn't have on supplies and books and trips. Her marriage ended partly due to her obsession with her class even when she wasn't at work. To create what she did in her classroom, she literally had to give everything, every part of herself, to her job.
It is not sustainable, and it is not reasonable to expect that of anyone. Teach For America (and, increasingly, schools across America) do, though. And it does not take long to feel the crushing weight of that kind of pressure weighing down on you. I felt it very early on.
But I still pulled myself out of bed every morning, determined to try again with each new day. I dragged myself through work, dragged myself to UNLV twice a week (this semester, I had classes in how to teach elementary math and science), and dragged myself to Teach For America meetings (the big ones, held about 5 times a year, were called All Corps; others were smaller and tailored to the specific needs of corps members). As much as I thought about quitting, I knew that I wasn't really going to. I couldn't -- quitting would mean giving up my income and benefits, and that would throw me back into the dire situation I'd only recently escaped from. So I knew that, as much as I wanted to quit teaching, I really couldn't. This article, interestingly, explores the fact that there are many teachers who actually do want to quit but don't, or else can't, and likens the profession to an abusive relationship. Like many, many other teachers, I wanted out, but knew that my options were limited, and I could not quit.
Until the time when I actually almost did.
About halfway through January, I got invited to San Francisco to read some of my work at a live event. This was something I really did not want to miss, and so I began working on the necessary arrangements to be there. I planned to fly out on Thursday night after work, go to the reading event on Friday, and then fly home on Sunday. I could return to work the following Monday. That meant that I would only miss one day of work (the Friday), and I put in for a substitute teacher about a month in advance.
Teachers are pretty fond of joking that it's often easier to go to work sick than setting up for a sub. Much of the time, this is true. Substitutes often need detailed plans for every second of the day, plus backup work in case they finish early. I usually spent a lot of time on mine. I was, therefore, running behind on that Thursday afternoon. It was only a few hours before I needed to be at the airport, and I was rushing to complete the plans. As I was frantically doing this, making sure that nothing was missing or out of place so that I could have a peaceful getaway to California, one of the strategists came into my room.
"I need a copy of your lesson plans for next week," she told me. She needed them in order to plan a small lesson she wanted to teach in my class. It wasn't a ridiculous request, as we were all required to have our lesson plans complete, and, ideally, on the drive, the Friday before we would be using them. My lesson plans for the following week were not yet done, however; I'd planned on finishing them on the plane and then submitting them to the drive on Monday morning when I arrived back at school.
I told her, "I don't have those lesson plans finished yet. I'm going to do them on the plane, and then I can e-mail them to you -- is that all right?"
She looked annoyed. "Don't worry about it. I'll just pull them off the drive."
"They won't be on the drive until Monday, when I get back into town," I pointed out. There were lesson plans in the drive already for the coming week, but they were only partially complete. Most of the plans were old plans, a template plan that I used to construct all new ones. If she pulled the plans now, they would not reflect the lessons I planned to teach the following week and that, of course, would be a problem.
"I need them by tomorrow," she told me.
"Then I can e-mail you."
This frustrating back and forth seemed to go on for far too long ... but when she finally left the room, I was under the distinct impression that she would wait for my e-mail. She, as I would learn later, must have been under a very different impression (or else, as I have long suspected but never vocalized to her, she decided to play "spy" for Mrs. Lawrence and pulled my old lesson plans knowing in advance that they were old -- but I'll get to that in a moment).
I finished my lesson plans on the plane (as I'd planned to do) and then started making revisions to the piece I'd be presenting later that weekend. Once I'd landed in San Francisco, I took the BART train to meet the friends I'd be staying with, and then proceeded to enjoy an evening of wine and talking. That night included much laughter, which I desperately needed at that point.
The next day, as promised, I sent my lesson plans to the strategist who needed them. I thought that would be the end of that. I received an e-mail from her, though, saying that she hadn't received my lesson plans, and that she'd just go into the drive and get them. Of course, the lesson plans in the drive were not the ones she needed, so I tried e-mailing the plans to her once again. I didn't hear back, but I did get an email from another strategist, informing me that one of my students was being moved from my class.
The e-mail was also addressed to Mrs. Lawrence and Mr. Gallon and went something like this: "This is to inform you that, after meeting with [name of student]'s parent, [name of student] will be removed from Ms. Sirls' class and into Mr. Gallon's class, effective as of Monday, February [I don't remember the exact date, but it was either the 1st or 2nd, I think]."
That was all. I found out, through an e-mail, that I was losing a student. There was no explanation as to why this was happening (though this did happen to be the same student who had called me a stupid bitch some months earlier). The principal hadn't even bothered to e-mail me herself about it. I hadn't been involved in any meetings regarding this student, had not been asked about how he was doing in my classroom, or for my input on the matter. I felt completely blindsided.
And to top it off, I never did know whether the first strategist had received my lesson plans or not.
I tried to forget about it so that I could have a nice weekend filled with wine, great conversation, episodes of The Spoils of Babylon, walks along the San Francisco beach with my friends, and morning walks to the coffee shop.
I returned to school that Monday, and shit hit the proverbial fan. Everything I'd been worried about all weekend suddenly became a blinding reality in ways I'd never expected.
I was in the middle of teaching a math lesson when one of the strategists (the one who had informed me over e-mail about my loss of a student -- something that admin never did attempt to discuss with me) came into my room and told me, abruptly and curtly, that Mrs. Lawrence needed to see me immediately. So immediately, in fact, that the strategist would look after my class while I went, right then and there, to her office.
My stomach dipped. It couldn't be good that Mrs. Lawrence would pull me from my class, right in the middle of the day, rather than schedule a meeting with me. Whatever it was must be urgent. I told myself that urgent didn't necessarily mean bad, and kept my cool as I left my classroom. I entered the principal's office with an anxious smile on my face.
"You wanted to see me?" I asked.
She looked up at me with the serious expression I'd grown so accustomed to seeing on her and told me to sit down.
What proceeded thereafter can only be expressed as an emotional flogging in two parts. First, she began by ripping me apart for a math lesson she'd observed just prior to my trip to California. The lesson had featured a team building activity (building towers out of dry spaghetti, marshmallows, and tape), and then using data from the activity to practice our math standard of the day. Mrs. Lawrence was very upset that she was unable to link my lesson to the standard I was teaching, and even more upset that this had happened during Intense Week.
Intense Week happened once every 3-4 weeks or so. When Mrs. Lawrence assigned an "intense week," she wanted all classroom teachers to "intensely" teach multiple standards at one time -- because, you know, cramming students' heads full of information during a short, one week period totally increases understanding and retention. Or something. But if Mrs. Lawrence liked one word even more than "data," it might have been "rigor" -- whatever you happened to be teaching, during intense week or not, it had better meet her interpretation of rigorous. My lesson was apparently not nearly intense or rigorous enough.
I think it's always a good thing for people to understand their shortcomings and where they happen to go wrong in certain places, learn from them, and strive to be better next time. There were times when Mrs. Lawrence offered me this kind of guidance. Today was not one of those days, however. Mrs. Lawrence verbally cut me open over my horrible, non-rigorous, non-relevant lesson, her tone and volume continually rising to a shrill crescendo. I sat before her, partly frozen and partly trying to defend myself against what obviously couldn't be defended to her. The more she continued, the more it felt like her words were ripping me apart to confirm with aching clarity what I'd felt for so long now -- I was a horrible teacher.
The second half of this verbal beating began with an accusation that I wasn't keeping my lesson planning up to date. She claimed that she'd printed my weekly plans that morning, and that they were copies of old lesson plans, not new ones. I insisted that, although I had uploaded the new plans that morning when I'd arrived at school, they were definitely completed and fresh. I knew for a fact that I had done that, too, as I'd arrived especially early just to make sure I had time to -- I remembered doing it very clearly, and thus couldn't figure out where this accusation was coming from. I tried to explain that I used the old ones as a template, but filled in new plans.
"Are you sure you uploaded the new ones this morning?" I asked, suspecting that she'd received old lesson plans from a certain strategist prior to my morning upload.
Mrs. Lawrence insisted that she had, and challenged my denial of her accusation by turning to her computer and attempting to upload the lesson plans right then and there. I suppose she thought that by pulling them up while I was sitting there would catch me like a toddler with a hand in the cookie jar, and I'd have nothing left to say about it. When she tried to open the document, though, it wouldn't come up. I could see the fury building inside of her, as she automatically assumed that her inability to access my plans meant that the document was open in my room already. With rage blazing in her eyes, she demanded, "You're working on your plans right now, aren't you?"
I maintained that I wasn't, that they were done and uploaded, just like I'd said. So Mrs. Lawrence picked up the phone and dialed the assistant principal, whom she then asked to print out my lesson plans so she could see them. At this point, I was feeling pretty shaken -- obviously, this woman thought that I'd not only planned nothing for the week, but then proceeded to get caught in the act and then lie about it. And rather than investigate a possible misunderstanding, she seemed determined to prove that she'd caught me in an unprofessional display of non-compliance.
A moment later, the assistant principal arrived with my lesson plans and handed them over. Triumphantly, Mrs. Lawrence looked them over and then handed them to me. To my dismay, they were old lesson plans. For a moment, I sat dumbfounded, because I clearly remembered uploading the new ones that morning.
"I do have new plans," I told her, my voice shaking. "I uploaded them to the computer this morning. The only thing I can think of is that I forgot to load them to the actual drive, and that's why you're seeing the old ones." Feeling somewhat desperate now, I continued to relay that morning's events, and how I'd definitely brought new plans in. "I know that, at least, they're on the computer that I uploaded them to this morning. Can I run back to the classroom and print them off from there? I'll be right back, and then you can see that I do have new ones, but just forgot to load them."
Mrs. Lawrence, instead, decided to investigate herself. She walked me to the assistant principal's office and made me wait with her, to be babysat while she looked through my room on her own. I don't know exactly what she was looking for or what she expected to find. I don't know if she thought that I was planning on running back to my room to complete my supposedly non-existent lesson plans in the span of a few seconds. All I do know is that she went to my room without me, with my students still there (although I'd asked her to please wait to search my room until after my students had left for the day), while I stared, teary-eyed, at the wall of the assistant principal's office.
Aside from the strategist who had taken over the classroom while I went to meet with Mrs. Lawrence, the special education aid was also there that day to assist some of his sped students. Although I don't know exactly what happened in my classroom or what was said, the following day he brought me a small gift and asked if I was all right. I wasn't, but the gesture helped.
When she returned to pick me up from my mini incarceration in the assistant principal's office, she had new plans in her hands.
"These are what I found on the computer," she announced as we returned to her room.
They were the right plans. And I showed her that, too. I showed her how the plans didn't match the ones she'd previously shown me. I showed her how the lessons were obviously different, and how I'd obviously written fresh plans for the week. It didn't matter, though. She just put the plans down and ignored them, continuing to berate me for not being in compliance with the lesson plan rule (even though I was, and could now prove it).
I asked to be excused to the restroom, only because I couldn't control my tears at this point. She told me, quite exasperatedly, not to cry. She did, however, allow me to go to the restroom to clean myself up. And then I did my best to maintain my composure as I returned to class.
In all of the jobs I've ever worked, and through all of the bosses I've ever had, I can't pinpoint a time when I've ever been treated as unprofessionally and poorly as I was on that day. That day, I lost my will to keep teaching. My job wasn't about teaching anymore; rather, it was becoming about making sure that every single aspect of every single expectation was in place and just so, so that nobody could claim that I wasn't doing my job. The microscope had descended on me, and my work environment had become a mess of anxiety, intimidation, and fear.
My health began to suffer. My glucose levels began to skyrocket because of the stress, and I had a few trips to the emergency room to help get them under control. One morning, I arrived at school only to discover that my glucose was well over 300 (and I hadn't even eaten anything that day). I decided, with the help of Kristin Stowe, that I needed to leave and get my health under control before I could do anything else. I went to the front office to explain my situation, but, because I didn't have a substitute in place, Mrs. Lawrence didn't want me to leave.
I left anyway. And I left with the internal knowledge that I wouldn't be returning.
I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew I couldn't continue on the way I was. Something had to change. I began to brainstorm all of the things I could possibly do to make money if I quit my teaching job. I knew I'd likely have to go back to minimum wage positions for a while, at least until I figured something out. I felt between a rock and a hard place, and had no idea how to proceed.
I met with Christy to tell her about what was going on, and why I had sunk so low. Although I was hoping for some sympathy and direction, she all but blamed me for the situation I'd found myself in. It was my fault, and maybe if I'd just tried harder with Mrs. Lawrence, then she wouldn't have treated me so badly. It was typical TFA spiel when addressing a distraught corps member's depression: You're not trying hard enough, working hard enough, doing enough. Needless to say, that conversation did not help, and I left Christy with the subtle message that I would be quitting in the near future.
She could sense it, too. It was during this meeting that she asked me, as she did many times when I expressed frustration, "Why are you here, Kate? Why did you accept your offer from TFA?"
I responded, as was typical of me, that I wanted to end educational inequity. The real reason, of course, was that I accepted the offer because I was in desperate need of a profession and, more importantly, a steady paycheck. Now that I had one, leaving was difficult. Still, though, I felt I needed to leave, which brought us to the crux of Christy's question: If I'd truly wanted to end educational inequity, how could I leave? How could that possibly help my students? However badly I was doing, wasn't it at least better than the long-term substitute they were likely to get if I walked out of their lives forever?
Despite this, I was fairly certain that I still wanted to quit.
I found out later that Christy was fairly certain, too. She'd even, at one point, called her own boss to let her know that she was losing a corps member. It seemed pretty set in stone, among my TFA leaders and also various people at my school, that I was leaving.
In all honesty, I tried to. I looked into other areas of employment, but could not find good leads that paid enough to justify quitting. I thought about continuing to teach, just not for Teach For America (after all, I had a three-year alternate license with CCSD, and it would be easier to change schools if TFA wasn't there preventing me from doing it). I wasn't sure if I'd be allowed to keep teaching if I quit CCSD, but I thought about trying.
The truth of the matter, though, as I mentioned earlier, was that I couldn't quit. As much as I wanted to, and as much as I thought about it, I couldn't really quit TFA. They'd given me a loan to help cover the costs of relocating to Las Vegas, and I was on a repayment plan that worked well for me. The rule, however, was that if I quit the program, I would be required to pay the entire loan back in a lump sum, otherwise TFA would sue me for the money. I did not have the money to pay them back. Further, if I quit I would not be eligible for the AmeriCorps grant that was going to cover the student loans I took out for the masters program that TFA required of us. So if I quit, I would be left with these loans, plus a lump sum to TFA that I wouldn't even come close to being able to cover.
In part, I didn't quit because I couldn't quit. I was, in a way, an indentured servant to Teach For America. I also knew I wouldn't make a good living working at bank again, or in retail. But being a single mother with Type 1 diabetes didn't grant me the time necessary to truly seek out a better position for myself. I felt trapped.
But something else happened, too. During the few days I took off to get my health under control, I called my dad. My dad makes a (very good) living as a coach and motivational speaker, so I was hoping he might have some advice for my future. My dad gave me a speech about all of the horrible bosses he'd ever had, and about how I was letting other people control me (and if there's one thing that gets to me, it's the thought of other people controlling me). He spoke to me about how, no matter how my principal had treated me, I was letting her "win" if I quit. He told me to brush it off and walk back in with my head held high, and to do my job the best way I knew how. I don't remember his exact words, but they were powerful.
And so I went back to work with a mixture of despondency and optimism. With my dad's words (and the lyrics to the then-popular Let It Go) in my head, I took his advice. I walked into school with a carefully created smile and my head held high.
I told Mrs. Lawrence I wanted to meet with her, partly because Christy told me I needed to get things sorted out with her. (Christy was rather unhappy with me during this time due to the fact I'd tried to go over her head to get my school site changed after she'd told me it wouldn't happen, but she attended this meeting with me as a supposed support person.) I think that Mrs. Lawrence expected me to be somewhat hostile during that meeting, because I could literally see the surprise light her eyes when I sat down and explained calmly that I wanted to talk about the best ways to move forward together for the sake of our school and our students.
I think Christy was surprised, too. She'd known that I wanted to discuss my ill-treatment with Mrs. Lawrence, and had been expecting me to do that during this meeting. I didn't, though, and Christy was very emphatic afterwards that she thought I'd done the right thing.
This was my situation, and it wasn't going to change. I knew that, and so did everyone else at this point. I would do with it what I could, and do my very best to fall under the proverbial radar while I worked on being the best teacher I could ... by this time, though, I was quite doubtful that there was any chance I'd ever be a decent teacher.
But I could try.
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