K. asked me, in e-mail, if I get frustrated when I'm teaching. Um...yeah. I am, by nature, an extremely patient person (except sometimes I'm not patient with myself). But not when I'm tired. And these days I'm extremely tired. I am so tired that I get light-headed. I am so tired that I come home from school, needing food, and am sometimes too tired to actually eat. In a word: yikes. And then, when kids are throwing things, calling each other names, trying to do anything but work, and just generally being crappy, yes, I get frustrated. Especially when I didn't sleep enough because I was up late making an assignment to give them that they don't want to do because it involves actual work.
During these moments the appropriate response is to remind myself that I am just supposed to try my hardest to give these kids the resources to have a good educational experience, but I am also supposed to remember that I have no control over whether or not they'll take what I'm giving them. Recently I have not felt so appropriate because I'm exhausted, and am thinking, "why am I risking another relapse to teach high school?" Frustrated, yes. Depressed, a bit. Both made worse by lack of sleep.
I look around at the teachers in my school, a bunch of incredibly talented people who are also great teachers, great people, love kids, and really care about the quality of education. Thinking back to my less-than-great high school learning experiences (the coach who kept saying "Herk-es-no-vania" until I finally realized he was talking about "Herzegovina", the teacher who gave us the same multiple choice tests he'd been using since 1970...), I am pretty impressed and relieved that the PATHS teachers totally rock. Let's see, how do school systems attract great teachers?
- give them summers off. Yes, this is huge. Especially when summers are hot and sticky and schools are not air-conditioned.
- give them great pay except for the part when you're up all night grading or developing curriculum (kind of like programming in this regard, except that the teaching pay is worse).
- give them a nice 30-minute planning period every day, and then fill that time with meetings.
- make it really difficult to get certified because everybody in the state has problems doing the paperwork.
- make it expensive to get certified ($100 a year, plus $150 I get to pay each year to take a big test that says I can do math or read maps or whatever. I got almost a perfect score this year on the math and reading). $250 doesn't sound so bad until you remember that you're on a teacher salary. I did my budget this summer and realized that I don't have a choice: I have to teach violin and play gigs because I need that extra money to pay my mortgage.
And I have it good. Theoretically, I have 30 minutes to eat lunch with no duty, and if I weren't running around the building fixing computer problems and talking to students who arrive early, that would be a nice break time. Most schools don't even have a planning period. Teachers here don't have any duties. No hall monitors or lunchroom monitors. Small classes. I think about this and wonder, how does a regular high school teacher do it? I teach in the "country club" of schools (according to other Portland teachers), and I'm completely fried. Am totally in awe of teachers. Am understanding the beauty of true-false tests, though I still refuse to give them. Am encouraged by assistant principal to use "alternative forms of assessment" which, as far as I can see from his examples, means multiple choice tests??? (I [hope I] am sure that I'm simplifying, but I'm tired.) Am still wondering whether this will be my last year, because I just can't get this tired. I'd like a few more years of mobility, please, and more energy for violin students. And violin playing. Argh.