You're Fired!

Before Donald Trump ultimately delivers his own coup de grace (surely some statement so outrageously stupid will finally sink his ship, although current polls and events offer depressing evidence to the contrary, despite his best efforts to live down to my expectations) and fades into (at least) political oblivion, I thought I’d share my story that ties into his (typically despicable) catch phrase. I am going to post it on both my Hancock and personal blog because, well, I can.

The setting: Year 5, which some of you might know as Tenure Year. Although tenure’s protections are vastly overrated, it does mean that administrators must at least follow procedural rules to fire you. (They do NOT need to actually prove their allegations.) Prior to that, it’s a simple, “Buh-Bye.”

I don’t claim that I had achieved anything close to Master Teacher status by this time in my career. In fact, I make no claim to have ever achieved that. But this was an especially tough year.

• A new principal, the late John Gibson, arrived. 

• I was the president of the teachers union and was a constant (and some would argue, perpetually obnoxious) PIA to administration. I was also effective.

• I had the worst class in my entire career (of course, I didn’t know it at the time; I probably DID intuitively know that if many more like that had followed I would have self-terminated, at least as a teacher): Freshman English, a class roster of 28 students, 24 boys and 4 girls, with family names that read like a Who’s Who of Lemay infamy (including a couple of the girls). Average reading level of 12^th percentile, with the highest at the 25^th percentile. 20% were off the chart at the bottom. (I know of only 3 from that group who graduated, although I may have missed 1 or 2.)

• I was naive, believing that I could change the world and them. I kept trying to actually teach instead of just retaining (some semblance of) control. I had yet to learn that you couldn’t actually teach unless you had control; I hadn’t needed to know that the previous four years. So at least I learned something that year.

• I was not a good teacher for those kids. Could someone else have done better? I don’t know, but they could hardly have been worse. (They DID provide me with some of my best stories, though.)

• Relatively new father, with new responsibilities in that area and resultant marital stresses did not help.

Did John Gibson actually have orders to fire me? Can’t prove it one way or another, but he was an ambitious man and knew, at least instinctively, that getting credit for my leaving the Place would be a feather in his cap.

I was struggling. It was no secret. Gibson told an English department colleague concerned about evaluation that it would be unfair (his words), for example, to evaluate me based on that one class. (I remember no particular problems with any of my others; neither do I remember even one bona fide evaluation prior that point in my career. One year’s consisted of the principal stepping into my room and throwing me a mini-basketball from Lemay Bank; I successfully reached down and to the left to make the grab and earned praise: “You’re all right!”) Guess which was the ONLY class he sat in on and on which I was evaluated.

That spring, the late Jim (father of Cardinal broadcaster Dan) McLaughlin and I were in the lounge next to my room when the late Don Steckhan, math teacher emeritus, came huffing and puffing up the stairs. (Steckhan was a 5x5 smoker, so that description is pretty literal.) PCs were at least a decade away from common usage; everything was handwritten on paper, and Steckhan had a habit of perusing said papers on the principal’s desk while he was away.

“You need to get down there,” he wheezed. “You're being fired!” Mac (and I? – maybe) immediately headed down, confirmed what Steckhan had seen on the evaluation, and the wheels started turning.

I met with state union reps, lawyers were contacted, strategies discussed (including initial preparation for a lawsuit claiming a violation of my 1^st Amendment rights – did I say I tended to be outspoken and critical?). Most importantly, Mac (the law school graduate) set up a sidebar meeting with Superintendent Brodbeck. As near as I can tell, whether this was a plot or just a rogue operation, Brodbeck was either not in the loop or up for a fight. In any case, he assured Mac, “We don't want to fire the union president.”

They didn’t. When the evaluation conference was finally held (the shortest in my career, except for the year the [different] principal wasn’t speaking to me and just shoved it in my mailbox) the cover sheet, and ONLY the cover sheet, had been changed to read, “Recommended.” This despite, if you believe what was actually written on the evaluation itself, my being the worst teacher in the history of the universe. If I had believed it, I would have fired me. Instead, not even attempting a rebuttal, I took the win, signed the document, and left the office.

And life went on. By the time I finally retired, 29 years later, I think my personnel file had its own file drawer. 

Questionable Appreciation

As we wrap up another “Teacher Appreciation Week,” I’m conflicted about the future of teaching and the teaching profession….

Not too long ago I worked a softball clinic for girls in 3^rd to 7^th grades. We had some of our Webster players helping us, serving as demonstrators and wranglers. One of the girls showed exceptional aptitude for instruction and teaching. She took initiative (even though she was one of the youngest of our players there), adapted drills on the fly to keep girls involved at their skill level, made a personal connection with the young players, etc.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has read much of my blog that I believe that the best teachers are born, not made. Maybe a better expression would be that great teachers are born, then made, through training, practice, and self-examination. This young woman is a natural.

But I’m not sure, even as someone who feels good about his teaching career and proud of  the many former students who followed in it, that I’d urge anyone to choose that path any more. I’m discouraged at the direction I think education is taking, reducing the opportunities for artistry, increasing regimentation and standardization, creating technocrats and interchangeable parts. And don’t even get me started on the games being played with online degrees and programs to earn salary bumps, or the ever-increasing pervasiveness of online education.

It’s not that teaching has become harder. Maybe it has, but it was always a lot of work, especially for those who care about the students entrusted to them. It’s not that there is less respect for teachers. Perhaps there is, but we certainly had to deal with those who both looked down upon us and expected us to perform miracles. It’s not that teachers are underpaid. You can’t overpay a good teacher, nor underpay a bad one, although the former is seldom an issue. Even the fiercest critics of (public school) teachers are complimentary of many individuals. They mostly just object to teachers’ organizations (unions, a word I’ve been comfortably using for 40+ years) that help those professionals stand up for themselves and their students.

That resentment is not new, either. I remember the stunned look of a school board member back in 1973 (maybe 1974) when she accusingly declaimed, “You just want more power for teachers” when I answered, “Yes, we do.” After a brief silence, she stammered, “You know, you’ve told the truth two or three times tonight.” How dare teachers want to be in charge of their own profession. Who do they think they are?

I would certainly be proud of any young woman or man who wanted to join the profession, certainly prouder than my parents were of my choice. And maybe my confliction is the result of seeing the past as better than it really was, another of the joys of aging. Maybe my parents didn’t see a teaching career as any kind of accomplishment because it was, even then, a second-tier profession. I spent a lot of time and energy working to push it into the first tier, and I always felt the equal in terms of skill and importance to any doctor or lawyer, even if society seldom reciprocated that feeling. (I thought the same of all the underrated and underappreciated Registered Nurses who share this week of appreciation, incidentally and, perhaps, ironically. Apparently neither profession is worthy of a week in the spotlight alone.)

For all that, however, I don’t know that I would ever encourage someone to become a teacher, as crucial as I think the profession and its practitioners are. I hate feeling this way. I certainly didn’t always feel this way. Still, I wouldn’t judge any parents who discouraged their children from making that choice. To be fair, when I mentioned this misgiving in the complimentary e-mail I sent the parents of the above-referenced daughter, they concurred with my assessment of her abilities and were excited about the possibility of her being a teacher. So I am willing to concede that this week just has me taking a darker view than perhaps I should and my developing codger hood simply represents the passage of time.

So let me end on a more positive note and thank my colleagues, past, present, and future, and tell those many former-students who are now in, or planning to join, the profession: “Thank you. I’m proud of you and appreciate what you’re doing, what you’re giving to society. Keep the faith and keep up the good (hard) work.”

The Bogus Issue of Tenure

I had a short, acrimonious but non-violent, confrontation with a (paid) signature collector, trying to get the elimination of tenure for teachers on the ballot. Of course, me, being me, I wasn’t satisfied to just decline his offer to sign “to improve Missouri teachers;” I let him know what I thought of the proposal and countered by asking how much he was being paid for each signature, a question he declined to answer. The issue has also recently popped up tangentially on a protracted Facebook conversation that started about the much maligned Common Core Standards. (I’ll save my commentary on that for a later, probably much later, day.)

Eliminating tenure won’t do anything except make it easy to get rid of teachers courageous enough, independent enough, to ask inconvenient questions of those in power, be they school board members, central office administrators, or principals. I can confidently claim that my teaching career would likely have been much shorter without the protections of tenure. Aren’t courage and independent thinking qualities we want in our teachers? (By we, of course, I probably don’t mean those concerned with preserving or expanding their power.)

The argument that tenure protects bad teachers isn’t really defensible if you know how the system really works. Before you dismiss my position as biased, let me ask how many tenure hearings you’ve attended. In my career I attended three. Teachers lost every one. Only one of those could even remotely be called “unfair,” and that was kind of a bizarre (self-inflicted) circumstance (and wasn’t based on competence, but a “moral turpitude” accusation that was later recanted. Still, there was enough poor judgment involved that it was hard to defend the teacher. Incidentally, when moral issues are involved, things move pretty quickly.).

Who decides if a tenured teacher is inadequate? Administration, either on its own or at the behest of the school board. Who files the charges? Administration. Who determines if the teacher has improved? Administration. Who serves as the “prosecution” at the hearing? Administration. Who hears the evidence and decides on termination? Administration (school board). Tenure, in Missouri, provides only procedural due process (there are rules that must be followed), NOT substantive due process (actually having to prove the allegations of incompetence). It’s a stacked deck: the accuser, judge and jury all represent the school administration.

I’m not defending keeping bad teachers around. Behind the scenes I helped negotiate some early exits for a number of teachers, and concurred with a principal’s decision to remove another teacher before tenure. That brings up an oft-ignored point. Administrators have FIVE (count ‘em, 5) years when they can non-renew a teacher without even giving a reason. (“Sorry, you're not a good fit. See ‘ya. Good luck.”) Surely that's plenty of time, if administrators do their jobs, to ensure that only good teachers get tenure. Good teachers are professionals with pride in their work. They don’t start phoning it in after five years, just because they earned tenure; most, in fact, continue to get better. For the few that do, see the note about the illusory protections of tenure, above.

Here’s an ironic end-note. What would protect a teacher who disagrees with, and wants to fight, the implementation of Common Core? Yep, tenure. Beware the simple answers, now and always. Also, be careful what you wish for; it may not turn out exactly like you think it should. Probably won’t.