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Elizabeth Andrew
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Why I Can't Write about Being a Teacher
Lisa, the head of the Catholicmom.com, suggested I write about what it’s like being a teacher. After all, it’s likely that many mothers read this website, and wouldn’t it be great to have real, behind the scenes, input from someone who works in the education system?
I’ve thought about this for months. What on earth could I write? Truly, what on earth could I write that couldn’t get me fired from my job!?
You see, everything a public teacher does and says is considered to be representing the school system. When you sign up to be a teacher, similar to being a politician, what you say and do can and will be used against you in a court of law. I’d be insane to write a column about my experiences as a teacher. As a teacher I am surrender my life over to public scrutiny. It is sometimes joked that all a teacher has to do is part his or her hair the wrong way and whoosh! Goodbye!
Personally, I do not accept this trend. I do not accept the growing assumption that teachers are supposed to robotically exist. I maintain the basic civil right of freedom of speech as outlined in the U.S. Constitution to the extent that I do not give false witness or slander in anyway my employer. I must toe the invisible line that separates my freedom to write a column on being a teacher and being the perfect image of whatever people have in mind for me to be. At best, it must be “tongue-in-cheek” writing, wherein I’m always half serious and half kidding.
I do not know how teachers lack of privacy came about, but I think it has something to do with peoples desire to put teachers into a mental box and hold them there, overlooking that we have dynamic lives outside of school. In fact, when a student sees me in public, the response is one of speechless shock. At the mall once, a little girl sputtered out, “What are you doing here?” I said, “Shopping, what are you doing here?” She stood there, frozen, her mouth gaping open in astonishment. She might actually still be standing there.
Consider the time a student saw me in a parking lot with my car keys. She exclaimed, “You know how to drive?!” Trying to put things in perspective I said, “I’ve been driving for as long as you’ve been alive.” The next time I saw her in school I asked, “Well, how do you think I get to work?” She thought for a moment and I could tell she hadn’t really considered that I leave work, go somewhere else, and then return to work. In student’s minds, teachers are just always there. We are fixtures in the classroom who have magic fairies bring us new clothing and fresh coffee each day.
I can’t write about being a teacher because as a teacher, I am subject to being googled. I have no doubt that my name has been typed into a search engine or two. (So to any parents who are reading this: Hello! Please make your kid practice and remember his or her instrument on the correct day! Thank you!) Seriously though, here’s a short story that exemplifies what I’m alluding to:
Once there was a father with a camera on his cell phone. This father decided to take my picture. He then sent my picture to the employees of the company he owns with the question, “How old do you think this teacher is?” The survey came back and my age was determined to be 12. His son, relaying this story to me, loved the fact that I was 12 because that meant I would soon be 13. He declared, “Then you get to have your Bat Mitzvah!” I didn’t know what to think. I hadn’t known that my picture was taken and certainly did not give the go-ahead for it to be passed around to strange men and women sitting in some office. I was also slightly troubled that strangers thought I looked 12. On the one hand, I was still in puberty; on the other hand, I had a Jewish rite of passage coming to me at my next birthday, which as a Catholic, is sort of exciting.
Please note that this is the only story I can relay for internet publication. I figure, if this stalker-father doesn’t like it, what on earth is he going to do? Tell on me? As my older brother once explained, “You can’t tell on me without telling on yourself.”
Because of such breaches of privacy that regularly occur to teachers throughout the country, teachers tend to hold tight to whatever we confidentiality about our lives that we can. Personal home phone and cell phone numbers are kept secret for fear that a parent will actually use it. Open communication, yes, sounds good, bring it on. But if you call me on a Friday night or Saturday I will likely wonder who on earth you are. If I do know who you are, I will pretend not to know who you are.
Teachers are to be little bubbles of neutrality. Smart enough to get the info across, entertaining enough to keep things interesting, but definitely no opinions! I wonder though, how the country is to equip schools with smart and dynamic people who are willing to be teachers in the first place, but who just so happen to be opinion-less! It doesn’t make sense. If the expectation is for schools to find good teachers with a strong worth-ethic, it’s likely those teachers are leading quite the life outside of school as well.
I cannot write about being a teacher for internet publication because I’m catching on to the fact that I have to create verbal gymnastics routines each time I speak with parents. Let’s take, for example, the scenario where a kid can’t carry a tune in a bucket and his parent asks me how he’s doing, I’m supposed to say something that alludes to the potential of the child like, “Your child is working at his own pace.” Parents, if a teacher says something that sounds a little too politically correct, please do a mental translation. In this case, I am thinking something closer to, “Gee, I hope he’s good a soccer because the band thing is not going to work out.”
If you find that teachers seem to have an edge of defensiveness, consider the fact that being a public school teacher is one of the only jobs in the world, except for the job of president, wherein other people feel they know more about your job than you do. This is not necessarily parents, but really the general public. People feel that since they themselves have been students in schools, they are automatic experts on the state of education in the entire country! This would be like me thinking I can be a doctor just because I’ve been to the doctor several times. Others believe they know the real deal about teaching because they’ve seen Stand and Deliver and Mr. Holland’s Opus. Again, this would be like me trying to be a fighter pilot on the basis that I’ve seen the movie Top Gun 14 times. People who have never darkened the doors to an education pedagogy class assume they are experts on the ways of Piaget, Kolberg, and Bloom. People who have never had a full time teaching job in a public school have the audacity to think that teachers work from 8:15-3:15 each day (as contract requires). This assumption is so off-base that I can’t muster the patience to describe a more accurate picture.
I was once at a holiday get together when all of a sudden some of the guests decided to let me know that a.) teachers are paid too much and b.) they don’t do anything to deserve being paid too much. I’ve never assumed to know what someone else does at their job, inform them that they aren’t worth their salary; much less at a holiday get-together.
What is also disturbing is when people innocently inquire, “How’s school?” I want so badly to respond, “I’ve already graduated.” I go to work. I do not go to school. My work, my employment, my career for which I have master’s degree, takes place in a school. After vacation I do not go back to school, I go back to my job. It’s the kids who go back to school.
The following is not meant to sound mean. This is just a little something I thought I’d point out: Many teachers deliberately avoid living in the town they teach in. It’s not that we don’t love running into students and parents every 45 seconds, it’s just that some teachers don’t like having mini-conferences on the sidewalk while on a date. This hasn’t happened to me, mostly because I haven’t been on any dates, but it’s happened to people I know. In a similar incident, I was once at the check out counter of a supermarket in the town that I teach in. As I was signing the credit card slip, a woman jumped (really, jumped) into my line of vision from behind the counter in front of me. She exclaimed, “Miss Andrew!” My son will have his trumpet on Wednesday!” I looked up, shocked to have heard my name being called out in a public place.
The other people in my check-out line craned their necks to get a good look at me. The cashier stepped back. The bagger even paused. All eyes were on me. I thought, “This must be what Britney Spears feels like in a grocery store!” I nodded and smiled, thanking the mother for letting me know her son would be prepared the following week.
The reality of carrying out ones life in the town where one teaches sunk in one afternoon when I was getting coffee with a colleague. All at once he and I were surrounded by 30 of our former students.
Student: “Miss Andrew, are you on a date!!?!?!?!!?”
Me: “No, this is Mr. X. He teaches at School Y.”
Student: “So this is your date, huh?”
Me: “Mr. X is married.”
Student: “Miss Andrew! You’re on a date with a married man!?”
This sounds funny in the re-telling, but at the time I was keenly aware that this is how rumors start. Gossip, rumors, and teaching are intimately connected. Usually the information that is passed along is grossly incorrect. Either way, I have at times used student’s ability to pass information along with efficiency that could rival the Underground Railroad in order to get real messages out to the student body. After all, why waste paper? When I’ve needed to reschedule a band rehearsal I just call upon the key 2 or 3 students who I know can get the message out. I tell them, “Band will be at 1 o’clock instead of 2 o’clock. Do you think you can tell everyone?” The student’s eyes grow wide with excitement of having been delegated a legitimate gossip mission. I tell them that I’m counting on their advanced communication skills and off they go! This has never failed me! In fact, the federal government can be rest assured that if the internet were ever defunct, that 10 year old girls can be used in its place!
So, no, I cannot be candid in what I write for Catholicmom.com from a teacher’s perspective. I am a public employee. I belong to tax payers. Whatever I do and say is public information. If I could write candidly for the readers of Catholicmom.com and know that people in that town I teach in couldn’t access what I’ve written, then I would. The problem is we live in a global community. On the internet, there are no walls of privacy. The ability to google my name and see editorials I wrote as a college student ten years ago is the reality that I live within. As much as my teacher contract provides me the sanction to participate in political and religious activities without the fear of citation, no teacher contract can keep people from looking at the pro-life bumper stickers on my car or from peering into my grocery cart and seeing the 6 pack of Guinness.
If you want to know what teachers really think you have to befriend us, invite us to your home, and fill us up with wine. As long as you are partaking as well, we will gladly let you in on the real deal.
I look forward to the invitation.
 Elizabeth Andrew founded the University of New Hampshire's Students for Life group, which has gone on to receive the Cardinal John O'Connor Evangelium Vitae Award. After college, Elizabeth walked the length of California with the American Life League project, Crusade for the Defense of Our Catholic Church. The following summer she walked the east coast with the Missionaries of the Eucharist, which is a group that promotes Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body. She lives and writes from New York. Visit Elizabeth Andrew's website at www.ElizabethAndrew.org |
