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. 

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.