Sunday’s Washington Post included an article written by Sarah Fine, a young, gung-ho teacher who is leaving the public charter school on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC where she taught for four years. Ms. Fine’s piece articulates for me some of the many conflicting emotions I have about leaving teaching even though I’m good at it and love it.
Ms. Fine’s article and the ensuing comments posted on my Facebook wall about it got me thinking about my own answer to the question, “Why am I leaving teaching?”
A couple of easy, family-dinner-party-safe answers to that question come to mind, the first being that I was laid off by the school district (thank you, recession). Soon thereafter comes the explanation that I was accepted to one of the top graduate schools of education in the country. These two stock answers do a pretty good job of satisfying the inquirer and ending the discussion. Plus, they’re the truth.
But there’s more to the story than just being laid off and going to grad school. When I really think about why I am leaving the classroom, I am confronted with three facts and some big realizations from my two years of teaching in an east Los Angeles middle school.
Fact one: I am driven to make an impact in this world that will make it a better place and teaching allows me to do that. Peers that share my central goal of social change surround me at my former places of employment and in my circle of friends. My Jewish tradition teaches the values of tikkun olam (repairing the world) and the urgent pursuit of tzedek (justice). Like many members of the Millennial generation, I want my work to be more than a source of income; I also want it to nurture my desire to make society more just for everyone who lives in it. Teaching my amazing students in a low-income community allowed me to see daily the direct impact I was having at repairing the world.
Fact two: While I’m far from the best teacher to ever walk this earth, I am better than average at teaching. My students’ scores on Los Angeles Unified School District Periodic Assessments in English were among the highest in my school. Over 52 percent of my students scored proficient or better on the 2008 California Standards Test in English compared to only 28 percent of students at my school who scored proficient or better on the same test. While Periodic Assessments and CSTs are by no means perfect or lone indicators of success, they are handy yardsticks for measuring academic achievement. My students’ achievement indicates that my leadership in the classroom had a positive effect.
Fact three: I love teaching. There are very few things better than the natural high at the end of a lesson that I taught well and during which the students learned what they needed to learn. I love interacting with the students, taking them to science camp for a week, acting out simulations with them, modeling for them, creating a safe space for learning and exploration, reading their writing, facilitating debate, and helping them grow. On the best days, being with kids is the best thing in the world.
So if I want to make a difference in the world, teaching allows me to do that, I am good at teaching, and I like it, why leave the classroom?
I don’t like to talk about it, but I have seen first-hand the screwed up system that frustrates teachers’ efforts to creatively educate their students; a system that too often systematically puts adults’ needs ahead of students’ needs; a system in which bureaucrats who have extremely limited knowledge about teaching and learning are nevertheless empowered to make unilateral decisions affecting hundreds of thousands of students and teachers; a system that not only protects my most underperforming, apathetic colleagues, but also rewards them with a higher salary than I earn; a system that expects me to do the bare minimum in my classroom and—when I far exceed those expectations—sends me a big, fat, pink slip. It makes me furious just thinking about all of it.
I don’t like talking about those negative things because they obscure the even larger lesson I have learned first-hand: Students and families in low-income communities are fully capable of the academic success their counterparts in high-income areas achieve and they desire that success. For every myth about apathetic parents, I have stories of parents who respond to every phone call, who show up to every conference, and who eagerly volunteer their time and resources. For every yarn woven on the TV news about violence in schools, I have evidence of students’ kindness, empathy, and eagerness to discuss the perceived ills of their neighborhood and their world.
I am leaving the classroom out of a conviction that this broken system can be fixed. I am leaving the classroom driven by a vision of a public education system that provides a high quality education to the very students that I have taught and to the 13 million students growing up in poverty across the county. I am leaving the classroom out of anger that less than half of students who grow up in low-income communities will graduate from high school when I know from my own experience that they are all capable of doing so. I am leaving the classroom so that my students’ children will have equal access to the same high-quality, free, public education that children in Beverly Hills receive.
Is this effort of large-scale change that I embark upon more effective than the impact I would have in the classroom? Will it be as satisfying as having direct daily contact with students?
I am not sure of the answers to those questions and it might be a while before I really know.
But if it turns out that I miss the students too much, or that I am better suited to make a direct impact, then back to the classroom I will go—with joy.
