Stop Exploiting Teachers: Rethinking Education Part 2
I remember the day I decided to leave my teaching job because it was one of the worst days of my eight year teaching career. In the hope of revitalizing my passion for teaching after several years of what felt like a descent into burnout, I decided to move from middle school back to elementary where I taught a primary grade class.
The day I decided to quit, I walked out of an evaluation meeting with my principal, who had already spent all of that year saying backhanded, demeaning things to me. She had recently observed my classroom as was required each year at the time, and it was time to debrief. As expected, she sat and told me how I hadn’t stated my objective (she was fifteen minutes late to observe me and had missed that portion of the lesson), how I didn’t have my objective posted on the board (I did) and how my entire lesson and my teaching career as a whole was a steaming pile of dog shit in her eyes. I walked from the meeting fuming. Even today, more than ten years later as I write about it, I can feel the pressure of righteous indignation building in my chest.
We cut the meeting short because my planning time was ending, and I picked up my class and took them to the computer lab. It was there, while my students worked on a math program our district used, that I made the decision. I discreetly texted my mom. “I’m quitting my job. I’m done.” Typing those words into the screen lifted the concrete that had settled into my bones sometime around the first week of school. Instead of brooding and carrying my anger over the meeting like a sack of bricks all day, I walked with a bounce in my step. How long had it been since I’d felt really good at work? Far too long — maybe even years. Officially, I took FMLA for the rest of that year, but I knew when I walked out the door for Christmas break the next week that my career as a public educator was over for good.
I’ve spent the last decade peeling back the layers of what drove me to quit. At the time, I told people I was in an abusive relationship with my career, and I finally decided to end it. It felt true then, and while I might not ever be finished unpacking all the reasons teaching didn’t work for me, it feels true still, all these years later.
About two years ago I finally relented and began working as a substitute teacher, mostly at the schools where my kids attend as students (thus removing the need for childcare). Today I had to turn down a substitute job because I haven’t completed a specific training that is mandatory for all substitutes to complete if we want to work during the phased hybrid reopening plan, to make sure we have a handle on managing Google classroom. Though the training is required, it is also unpaid and scheduled on non-student school days. I haven’t done the training because I can’t/won’t pay for child care if they’re not paying me to be there, and I can’t leave my kids at home by themselves during a day when they are not physically at school. I doubt the district’s HR department has considered how this model inherently excludes caregivers of all kinds, but especially mothers with children, most especially during a time when many families are barely able to make ends meet in the first place.
I couldn’t take a job because my labor as a caretaker is, to our society, not worth anything. This also speaks volumes about the value placed on my expertise as a teacher and my willingness and ability to learn and employ new systems and instructional models. That is to say, I am doing women’s work, and women’s work does not have monetary value in our culture. Since I was born to care for children, to teach them, to lay myself on the altar of capitalism to raise up the next generation, these tasks are supposed to be a given offering. They are not recognized as things that take time, effort, care, and even expertise to accomplish. I’m supposed to give them away forever, for free. Such is the price of being a woman; of choosing a profession that is inherently associated with care taking.
I’m almost a decade out of my full time teaching career, but still almost weekly I’m reminded in new ways of how the education system was built to exploit me, and how it continues to do so. Why don’t very many people of color and other minorities work in education? Maybe it’s because the system wasn’t built to benefit them. Not as children, and not as adults. It was built to exploit them. It was built to exploit me, too. Our entire education system runs on the exploited labor of mostly women. I didn’t recognize that when I quit. I didn’t recognize the way my (female) principal was perpetuating misogyny on other women (she targeted another teacher at my grade level as well, and through the grapevine I learned this was a pattern of behavior for her), but I see it now. I didn’t recognize the systemic reasons for my depression, burnout, and anger, but I can identify them now.
In schools around the US, an entire week is dedicated to “teacher appreciation.” This concept is built on the fact that on some level, we know that what we do to teachers is wrong. We, as a society, have a basic understanding that teachers are exploited, even if we’re too “nice” to use that verbiage. There is no amount of thank you notes and flowers and coffee mugs that will make up for this. Do you know what every teacher wants for teacher appreciation week? To stop being exploited for their physical and emotional labor.
Thank a teacher by voting for people who support the discontinuation of this exploitation. Thank a teacher by voting for local and state taxes that allow for smaller class sizes and adequate compensation for teachers and other school workers. Thank a teacher by calling out your school district via emails to the superintendent and school board when they make demands of their employees that would be considered unreasonable in any other industry. Thank a teacher by supporting programs like universal health care and social safety nets that would keep their students in school and more focused with full bellies and healthy bodies, reduce the need for teachers to perform social service tasks for which they are untrained and unqualified, and allow them access to mental health services when they need them. Yes, most school districts have employee health insurance options that are partially paid for by the district, but no, they are not usually good enough to cover mental health services in any substantial way.
The next time you, out of guilt, share a meme about our hard working teachers, or spend your hard earned cash on teacher appreciation gifts, take a moment to ask yourself what else you are doing to make their lives better and end the cycle of use and abuse in our education system.
