Since my close encounter with moving to DC – when I was scrambling for any morsel of what my future life/job/universe might be like – I’ve been reading several blogs from writers in the area. On the outside looking in, if you will. The public schools had been of particular interest to me -obvs- and I’ve been following a teacher in Southeast DC who regularly divulged the dirty details – the reality – of her job as a 5th grade teacher. DC Teacher Chic.
The teacher recently made an admittedly surprising move and left her position mid-year. She’s been very candid about the reasons; in fact, she takes the risk of sharing her identity and that of her school by sharing said details with DC Wire.
From a teacher’s perspective, the “Comments” sections (in both the DC Wire article and DC Teacher Chic’s blog) are where you’ll find yourself shaking your head and holding yourself back from calling out 80% of the commenters as stupid idiots without a clue who cannot spell or write properly! (Whew, feels good.) It’s easy to see which commenters are the teachers, which are the posers, and which are the ignorant, unappreciative teacher-haters.
Listen, when teachers talk about how stressful the job can be, it isn’t just mindless complaining. If most teachers have the same complaints about their job, shouldn’t we come to the conclusion that the LARGE number of people who make up this demographic are NOT just a bunch of whiners but that there is a real need for change? (Am I channeling Barack Obama here?) What affects the teachers eventually affects the students. Better education starts here.
This is why I can’t blame DC Teacher Chic for leaving her position. Though I don’t take abandoning a responsibility lightly (Did I mention I am a Catholic? GUILT!) if the school environment/the administration/the student are placing the amount of mental duress on you that results in regularly vomiting before you go off to work, it is time to leave. Not only for the teacher, but for the students. I think that’s the part many of the commenters are missing: You have to be healthy and well in order to teach. You can’t do your students justice if you are under intense, unforgiving stress every day.
That being said, I’m a teacher in a suburban district and therefore don’t know or truly understand the problems of urban districts. We just don’t face the same problems of attrition that the latter does. There are also some things this teacher had mentioned that do give me misgivings (i.e. “Can I see a show of hands of teachers who have been asked for a bite of food? I get this question all the time.” I am going to hope I’m missing something here and that she isn’t truly eating in front of her likely-hungry students.) The point is that if this example of the urban teacher exodus isn’t a legit one, there are multitudes of examples of that are.
What will it take to turn urban districts and schools around? So that teachers don’t get to the point that DC Teacher Chic did? If education is the foundation for everything else, when we can’t figure out how to effectively educate ALL our country’s children well, we can’t expect to have a productive society in the future.
*PS: If you go back to earlier posts on this blog, DC Teacher Chic discusses Michelle Rhee’s (district superintendant) contract proposals – some of which feature the phasing out of tenure. An interesting conversation in itself, this part is worth reading as well. Remember, DC is often the petri dish for initiatives that go nationwide.
*PPS: See, not a re-post! Happy face!
Giggles and Tears
