Why Is It So Hard To Be A Progressive Ed. Teacher in 2020?
I quit.
I feel sick every time I think about my work. Like literally. Sick. I’m thinking about it now and fighting the urge to run to the bathroom and hurl.
Can you blame me? I am, after all, a public school teacher.
Today, teachers are both honored and vilified; appreciated and neglected; essential and expendable. We are and have been for a long time the unsung glue holding this country together. It took a worldwide pandemic for everyone to realize the extent to which our positions are needed. And yet, we are still put in harm’s way, day after day, treated as though our lives are not as important as everyone else’s. Our mayor and other elected officials speak about how much teachers are valued. They talk about keeping us safe and making sure that we have all that we need in order to “stay” safe. They say that the ‘health of our teachers is of the utmost importance’. While this message is being broadcast across newspapers, television stations, and social media, teachers are in school buildings that have yet to pass safety inspections. We are running out of PPE and other necessary safety supplies. We are asked to teach with open windows and doors during cold winter months, in the name of ventilation, while our students shiver and try to learn while covered in the blankets they’ve brought from home.
We are asked to teach students who have been traumatized by this whole ordeal, while we, ourselves, are and continue to be traumatized.
I’m tired.
I’m tired of being told of my importance while being under compensated. I’m tired of being asked to prove my worth every time there is a day off for a holiday or a break, as if I haven’t worked hard enough to deserve some time off. I’m tired of trying to convince others that I am, in fact, a seasoned, licensed educator, and not a glorified babysitter.
The school building in which I work has, over time, created a sense of doom and dread within me. Where it once was a place that provided a great sense of joy and fulfillment, where I looked forward to seeing the bright, eager eyes of children, it is now merely a symbol: a one-square city block homáge to inequity. It is a place where I feel my gender, my race, and my class more than anywhere else. It’s not supposed to be this way — especially for the teachers of our youngest citizens. We, if we’re doing our jobs correctly as teachers, are not only tasked with teaching writing, reading, and math, but we are also communicating hope and promise to children. We are letting them know that all of this studying and building and learning has the potential to create some real change in the world; that we are spending all of this time together now, so that we can prepare for and establish for a kinder, fairer, more tolerant future.
It’s extremely difficult to transfer that optimism, that sense of hope and promise, when I feel hopeless and when the promises made to me and my colleagues are not kept. When the chasm between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ has had a bright light shone upon it, exposing its surprising depth and alarming breadth, and the powers that be continue to chip away at it, creating deeper trenches, all the while telling teachers that we’re essential.
Sadly, I don’t have a solution. I consider myself to be a forward-thinker. An optimist. A silver-linings kinda gal. About this topic, however, I’m at a loss. As long as there are people in power who are willing to push aside that which is right and just in favor of the most cost-effective course of action, there will always be inequity and injustice.
I’m a middle-aged teacher who has been teaching in New York City for the past 20 years. The fight has been beaten out of me and the seemingly boundless sense of joy that I felt when I first started out as a new teacher all those years ago has been slowly stripped from my bones. I feel incredibly disheartened. Discouraged. Discounted.
I fear that my undying love of children may not be enough to see me through this terribly divisive, anxiety-laden time in education. I continue to marvel at the resilience of children and their unquenchable sense of wonder, but I must also consider my purpose and whether or not I’m fulfilling it to its highest potential. I need to feel as if I’m making a difference, but I also need to feel valued. Like I’m important. Like I matter.
It may be time to move on.
