I've been having a real crisis of conscience lately. For me this is not really uncommon, but considering the reason I've been feeling more alarmed than usual.
It started with an interview on NPR a week ago. The anchorwoman (are they called that on the radio?) was interviewing the author of a new book, a how-to guide for choosing the correct school for your child. Among other things to avoid/watch out for, the author gave a stern warning for parents about new and beginning teachers: if you want your child to get the best education possible, they must be taught by a veteran teacher. New teachers have been scientifically proven less effective than more experienced ones. And, while one cannot dream to be able to avoid them entirely, one must be smart and make sure that there are rigorous supports and other levels of watch-dogging going on at one's child's school in the even that one's child is stuck with a new or beginning teacher, as it is unavoidable.
Being the type of person I am, hearing this admonition of sorts caused me to scream at the radio and choke back tears of sadness, frustration and rage. Yes, I am a new and less-effective teacher. Yes, I know this. Yes it causes me to lose many nights of sleep and feel absolutely terrible that my students could be receiving far superior instruction from one of my veteran colleagues. However, that's only half of it.
Like with any job that exists, there must be a steady flow of new talent to balance out attrition. (Although attrition has effectively stopped in the teaching profession as would-be retirees are finding it necessary to keep working so that they can actually live off their pensions after they retire, human beings generally do not live forever, making attrition inevitable even among teachers.) New talent is just that: new, yet talented. In order to always have good teachers, there must always be new teachers. Some ed reformers (ahem Michelle Rhee) go so far as to say that new = good and old = bad. I disagree. I think (on a good day) that teachers of all ages and levels of experience are valuable to the profession for the sake of diversity of opinion, etc. Call me old fashioned. Most of the time I'm an optimist. And this is what I had to believe, to make my mantra, and to chant to myself over, and over, and over again in order to get through grad school, student teaching, and my first teaching placement.
However, by the end of my first teaching placement last spring, I was having more and more trouble believing that being a new teacher was, in any way at all, worth it. As the summer wore on and now as fall quarter is looming two days away (I'm actually procrastinating right now, I should be planning and finishing up syllabi) I feel like a total apostate. During my teaching position last year (it wasn't contracted, I was a long-term substitute covering a maternity leave for roughly the second semester) and over the summer I had numerous conversations with wise, intelligent, and overwhelmingly awesome veteran teachers in which I decried the amount of work it takes to be a teacher and they more or less just agreed. You're right, you don't get to have a life. You're right, it is a miserable job most of the time. You're right, it is actually impossible to achieve our professional goals. You're. Right. Somehow, ten to thirty years later, these amazing teachers still found their job worth it. Some have families and some don't, but what I'm overwhelmed by the most is how, although they have managed to find some balance since their first years in the profession, there's a lot about the day to day rigor of the job that hasn't changed.
And here lies the crux of my crisis: I went into teaching because I love teaching, I love literature, I love creative writing, I love kids, and I'm really good at conveying my excitement and the importance of reading and writing. However, the deeper I get into the nitty gritty of this job, the less it seems to be about any of these things--the love of reading and writing, that is--at all. Perhaps I'm just past the honeymoon stage and, like with any job, shit gets way too real once you realize that rather than living a fantasy you're doing a job. However, reality is as far as I can figure somewhere in the middle. While I am supposed to someday be able to inspire my students, it will be awhile before I get there. And, when I do "get there," who's to say that the system of public education will allow teachers to make any independent choices about what happens in their classes?
I just don't know.
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