While waiting for my coffee to be ready, I realized that I will never say to another human being, never say without irony, "You're a smart person. Why aren't you a teacher?"
Like thousands and thousands of Americans, I hope I am healthy tomorrow. I need to be healthy tomorrow because I need to go to work. Stomach flu hit me hard before dawn on Saturday and has been the defining experience of my three-day weekend. I hope I am healthy tomorrow because tomorrow is another valuable classroom day, one of about one hundred and fifty from the beginning of the school year to the beginning of testing. The tests are designed to test the Standards, and the Standards are written to reflect a year's worth of learning, but the tests start at about the 85% point of the school year.
On this day of service, I can reflect on how I am paid to do what I love to do- in fact, I am paid to do what I have to do- but I am not paid when I don't work. My contract is for a school year and I receive ten direct deposits in my credit union account. To cover the two months when I am not paid, money is squirreled away in a "Summer Savers" account. People who really ought to know better talk about how teachers have summers off but they do not acknowledge that that time is forced unemployment without compensation. I am not allowed to file for unemployment benefits because I have a contract for the next school year. In a sense, I am not unemployed; I'm not working so I don't get paid.
After some minutes of thought, I can't think of another job in America that works this way. I am a mercenary. I'm paid when the campaign is hot. When the campaign is over, I'm told to fend for myself until the next campaign season, and I am most definitely expected to return for the next campaign season. I don't have to worry at the end of each March like the younger teachers. By law, they have to receive notice that there might not be a job for them the next campaign season...er...school year. They're told, not in these words, that they can risk the possibility of not being hired back- and they may wait until the new school year has begun- or they can start the job-seeking process. They're free agents but they are in competition with all the other free agents, including the freshly-minted new teachers from the education departments of the universities, for jobs that no school districts can say exist.
I admit I am afraid to ask younger teachers what it is like to teach in the months of April, May and June when they know that no matter how hard they work, they cannot earn a job. They can screw up and have their files put on the "no" stack but "yes, you have a job" depends on a government-produced budget and how many veteran teachers retire.
As for myself, I am a veteran teacher. At about the same time as when the younger teachers are receiving their maybe-not notices, I get a note to come to the office and sign what amounts to a letter of intent to return. By getting the veteran teachers to commit to returning, the school district can continue the process of preparing for the next school year. I can feel good that I have a job, and the district has a list of teachers who are locked-in, though the district will not guarantee where the jobs will be. Should I decide to take my skills elsewhere before the next school year, I have to formally request that the district release me from my contract.
On this day of service, I reflect on the fact that State legislatures in this country are woefully deficient in the number of women legislators. I reflect on all the women I have called colleagues and how so many of them are incredible managers of time and resources. They are used to organizing environments, selling a product, delegating, speaking in front of groups, negotiating one-on-one and being emotionally and intellectually "on" whenever the bell rings. They are used to hard work in a government setting, with all that that implies, and are used to the idea that their work will have both measurable and unmeasurable results. They are used to the idea that they will often receive scant credit for their successes while shaking off the pain of failures. As teachers, they must be the most optimistic people in any room.
And yet it is so rare to see a teacher run for office. It is rarer still to hear about a teacher being courted by a political group.
On this day of service, I reflect on how I, a fifty-year-old man, serve my country best by continuing to teach its youth. Only twenty-five percent of Americans graduate from college. Most college graduates do not want to do what I do, most college graduates can't do what I do, so people depend on people like me to do what I do. The fact that I love what I do is immaterial. Firefighters take pride in being firefighters. Nurses take pride in being nurses. Police officers take pride in being police officers. Teachers take pride in being teachers. Anyone who doesn't rally on that sense of pride doesn't survive and ends up doing something else. We are all part of the other middle class, the one that depends on the disbursement of government money. We are the skeleton of society.
That may explain why so few teachers (and firefighters, nurses, police officers, social workers and so many others) run for office. We are what we are; to run for office, and serve if elected, would mean we would have to be something else. We serve the public and depend on the public to support us.
On this day of service, what else do you want us to do?
P.S. I'm calling out you teachers. Speak up. Who are you?
P.P.S. I've started a diary series called The Tutoring Room on Wednesdays. I post it at 5:30 am Pacific time from home because I don't trust the computer connections at work. I don't worry about getting enough rec's to get on the Rec List so I just let the thing run all day. You can stop in twelve hours after the diary's posted and I'll read what you have to say and I hope others will, too. If you are someone looking for input on an academic problem, or if you are someone who can help others out, or if both are true for you, please stop by. Look it up in the Daily Kos search or return to this diary and look for one of my comments. I put the most recent diary's link at the bottom of my comments.