Sunday, June 12, 2011

Why I Quit Teaching - Part II - The Kids

I spent fourteen years teaching, mostly in upper elementary and middle schools. I endured the last year as a high school English teacher. That year definitely confirmed some notions that I had about the educational system.
Given the title of this post, you might think I am going to rant about how awful kids are today. Well, they are awful but I won't rant about the fact. I think they have probably been awful ever since adolescence was invented a hundred years ago so there is little new there for me to say in that direction.

My favorite students were, for the most part, those that did poorly in my class. This bothered me a great deal. It wasn't that they were unintelligent. In fact, these favorite students of mine were generally very bright. They just didn't buy into the bullshit set-up that higher education is or has become. Mostly boys, these students were simply putting up with school until they could join the military or get a vocational job. However, when I spoke with them, I could see and hear their innate intelligence and, in many cases, a sort of wisdom others might call street smarts.

My best students, the ones that kept their grades up and carefully reviewed all grade reports to make sure that they were accurate, were awful people. Sure, they possessed a certain body of knowledge and were able to complete assignments on time and more than adequately. But they were also uninspiring, boring and small-minded. Equally disenchanted with the educational system as my worst students, they had long ago surrendered to despair and dryly tapped out their lifeless writing assignments and other paperwork so that they could qualify for whatever scholarship or school they sought.

Of course, the student body did not exist in this perfect dichotomy. There were good students that were also pleasant people and plenty of scumbags that did poorly in my classes. But the trend noted above was significant and disturbed me all year.

Now, it would be easy to blame me for this issue and say that I should have struggled to inspire those favorite students of mine so that they would perform. And I admit I am not a perfect teacher and that maybe someone else could have turned things around. I certainly tried to do so. But in my opinion, after so many years in the classroom, the problem is with the system.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Why I Quit Teaching –Part I

A few weeks ago I resigned my teaching position at the local public high school.

Whenever someone asks me why I did something, I usually tell them that it is an irrelevant question. (Yes, as you may have guessed, conversations with me are not any fun. Oh, they’re fun for me, of course.) When I worked as a volunteer in refugee shelters in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, people often asked me that question and that was when I came up with my snarky answer. But, while mildly off-putting, it’s the real answer for a few reasons.

First, the question is irrelevant because I never do anything for just one reason. In fact, I have multiple motives for just about anything serious that I do in life. I suspect other people are the same way but some of them are happy condensing all of their reasons into one glib remark. I’m not. Usually, there are so many reasons behind my actions that it would take a ridiculously long time to answer a question that probably was not asked in earnest anyway (my misanthropic tendency shows a bit, doesn’t it?). Sometimes, I am afraid to admit, I cannot even find the words to state my motives; so what is the point of answering?

Second, the reason I continue to do something is often completely distinct from the reason I began to do it. This was certainly the case in Juarez, when I worked in a Mexican homeless shelter called Casa Peregrino. I am pretty sure that I came there, fresh out of college, in order to save the world. I stuck around for a year and a half for a succession of reasons that eventually withered up and died before I quit and moved on. Sometimes, when asked the dreaded question, I would reply, “Ask me why I stay. I’m not the same person who arrived here last year, so there’s no point in telling you why he came.”

Third, I don’t like answering a question like that because, if it is asked in earnest, then the person will usually try to spar with me over a decision I have already made, and I don’t discuss things that I have already decided. For instance, if I told an inquirer that I left teaching because I didn’t feel that the public education system was properly serving children, then I might suddenly find myself in an argument about how I could change the system from the inside. (Picture me gagging in jest as I gesture toward my open mouth with my index finger.)

But I am going to try to work out why I have quit teaching twice in the last four years and, on this most recent occasion, in the middle of an economic recession.

New Blog

As a starter location for an education website, I have created a blog about world history. Here's a link. It's also on the sidebar. Presently I have only completed a few posts about ancient history.