Scene: dive bar in undergraduate college town, Homecoming weekend, 5 years after graduation. I’ve just been walked out on by the ex-husband (henceforth known as the rat) 3 weeks prior and the haze of the control and manipulation have started to lift and I’m feeling pretty empowered. I can do this. I can get through this. Lord knows, I’m better off alone than dealing with that for the rest of my life. I decide to go catch up with friends I had seen far too little of for the past few years. We secured a few pitchers and a pool table.
D: (pulls out her blackberry to answer a text message)
Guy I graduated with: (pulls out his blackberry and smiles) So you’re in management, too?
D: (smiles ironically) You could say that.
Guy: Yeah, I just got promoted a few months back. I have 15 people under me, so I can’t really leave without this. (waggles blackberry) How many people are you managing?
D: A legion of about 150 adoring adolescents and another 600 minions under the age of 10… (laughs)
Guy: Oh, you’re just a teacher?
And there it is. A guy I’d known for 10 years, who had taken classes with me, who had paid me to edit his Writing I papers, who /knew/ I was smarter than he was, was looking down on me for being a teacher.
I shook my head and explained that I was a head HS Choir director, the musical director for our drama department, the show choir director, the music theory teacher and also had teaching responsibilities for an entire K-6 building by myself; all while making sure that everyone was having fun, learning rigorous curriculum, and turning out endless, expectedly flawless performances.
His response: Oh, so you’re a teacher. *
The obvious sub-text: None of that is impressive, because it’s not a real job.
I know, I know – you’re saying, ‘but Donita, that was just one person. Not everyone feels that way about teachers!’ But they do. At best, people are ambivalent or sympathetic; at worst, people are malicious (we’re greedy and we should be happy to give up everything we have to help our community’s future – you know, for the intrinsic rewards!); the vast majority are in the middle and invalidate every challenge that comes with teaching with the ever-annoying, ‘but you have Christmas and Thanksgiving and the whole summer off!’
I can’t think of many ‘vacations’ where I enjoyed myself in 8 years of teaching. I was either exhausted from my duties and spent the whole time trying to recover, or I was writing curriculum (because music isn’t a real subject and doesn’t need books or supplies), or taking grad classes (thanks Ohio Dept. of Ed. for all those post-grad credits that you required me to take that later made it harder for me to get a job when you changed your mind about your Masters’ degree requirement… oh, and the 5-digit student loan debt…). While I realize that all jobs have upsides and downsides, it doesn’t take Lady Justice to see that the scales don’t often balance in the teacher’s favor, if that teacher is the kind of teacher we’re supposed to be: driven, passionate, exciting, engaging, caring. There’s no way to maintain a positive balance in that emotional checking account when you’re always paying out of your time, of your money (which you don’t have that much of anyway), but most of all, of yourself.
Just a teacher.
I’m not Stephen Hawking, but I’m also not a high-functioning idiot. I got a 29 on my ACT without any prep, first time. I graduated in the top 10 of my high school class. I tested into 3rd year French & Calculus for engineers, and my English/writing professors wanted to know why I wasn’t in their department when I started undergrad. I had thought about going to law school for a long time. I wanted to defend the innocent; I wanted to help ensure that the system helped those who deserved protecting and held consequences for those who were deserving. I realized one day, though, that I would likely have to defend someone who was guilty and I would suck at that because my heart wouldn’t be in it. Also, I realized that I didn’t want to spend my whole career arguing and fighting for the cause du jour. 2016 me laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and then sheds a tear at late-90s me, realizing that by going into education, that’s exactly what I walked into. What I didn’t realize then was that in practicing law, you have the prerogative to choose your battles. In teaching, the battles came to me. I should have gone to law school.
I didn’t go into teaching because I was one of “those who can’t”. I went into teaching because I wanted my work to mean something; because I knew you can teach so much more than solfege and rhythms through music and those lessons would be important to those children in their lives one day. But the professional world just looks down on you and sees your wasted potential – you’re just a teacher.
*Irony: Even after being condescending, he tried to pick me up that night, convinced I was vulnerable from all my recent marital turmoil. I didn’t shut him down right away – I let it play out. I couldn’t imagine he thought he had any game left after he had insulted my work, my calling, the one thing I had left at that point. This late 20-something ‘management professional’ and his blackberry didn’t make a hotel reservation in time and was sleeping on the couch in a friend’s hotel room. He actually wanted me to shack up with him on someone else’s couch. I laughed. Right in his face. Sorry, BlackBerry Guy, even this teacher has higher standards than that.
Donita Westman 