Summer Time to Reflect: Prologue
Like most new year’s resolutions, my drive to write several times a week dissolved in the more pressing concerns of survival. I’ve survived the scrapes and battles of this most difficult school year, and have now granted myself several weeks to take inventory, sleep in, prepare for more war, and take care of my body. There is so much to recap since my depressing last post in January. Wanting to look forward more than back, I am going to make it short.
In February I had a health scare (infected gall bladder) that had me hospitalized for a week and out of the classroom another three weeks. Later in the school year I got a cold and a cough that wouldn’t go away. It was enough to miss more days of school, and it was a struggle to get through every day of coughing and spitting and going through tissue boxes and paper towels. Yuck.
I used Google Classroom to teach from the hospital and recovery bed. Divided by 8th and 6th grades I did my best to deliver my watered down integrated science curriculum. The 8th graders seemed determined to break my spirit as they mocked my desire to teach them. I don’t understand how a school admin can so badly mismanage talent but I’m sure “it’s not personal”. Of course everything in education IS personal, the relationships with students, the skills required to bring adults along, the passion for the subject matter and process. All of this is deeply embedded in my soul. How can I strip that off to do cold blooded politics? Guess I’m about to find out.
I finished off the National Board Certification process and get the final notification in December. It’s likely a done deal as I don’t even need a high score on Component 4 to certify. It’s all become a memory I want distance from: a gimmick laden process. It doesn’t prove that I’m a great teacher, but it can help a little. I’m proud to have completed it, having the NBCT and Fulbright names adds to my marketing value. After December I can file a bunch of papers and then get a 7.5% raise in LAUSD. If I choose to provide a ridiculous amount of unpaid service hours (90?), I get another 7.5% for a total of 15%. This is the motivation for most teachers in LAUSD who go after the NBC. Most do the math and figure how much those 90 hours are worth and then grunt their way through them.
That wasn’t my motivation. I just wanted to be in control of my destiny in a job where I am a cog in a machine. I serve at the direction of administrators who do not understand the work that I’m trying to do. I could choose to pivot out of the classroom and be a coach or TOSA (teacher on special assignment) or even open my own school (Clown Charter Academy anyone), but I think that every step away from the classroom would take me further away from the creative source. I can talk (and read) about education forever, but the classroom is the battlefield, it’s the action, it’s the real.
This summer I’m anxious. There’ll be a new principal at my school so things might get better or worse. My current assignment for next year is a crusher and it may be best to simply resign now. The politics at the school are mystifying until the dust settles. I met some really good science teachers from other schools over the first two weeks of summer and shared with some this vision statement brochure I made. If I could just get a chance to pitch this to the parents at the school… At least I can say for sure that things are about to get very interesting.
