In honor of the beginning of a new school year, here is an essay I wrote upon my resignation as a teacher, and a different resignation as someone whose ideal job is to teach. Our city is experiencing a strikingly high murder rate this summer–disturbingly high, and guess what? Blame for our society’s ills belongs squarely on us and the society we participate in and perpetuate, not on the parents. Disagree? Write me. I will school you, like a good teacher should. Screw diamonds–I’ve got logic, and I cut holes in arguments like diamonds against glass.
I struggled for months to figure out a valid reason for leaving teaching as a profession and to justify it to my mother. Recently I was able to. Teaching is a profession of administering tangible rewards and receiving none. We are told that the rewards of teaching are intangible but more valuable than esteem and a decent paycheck. I don’t typically succumb to feeling guilty about my decisions or actions, and although I knew I was making the best decision for myself, the selfishness of that decision troubled me, hence my search for a pacifying justification. Here was my revelation: Being a teacher is like being in an abusive relationship. In my experience as well as in the experiences of many of my associates, this conclusion is both fitting and illuminating. Below are many warning signs of abusive relationships that also apply to being a teacher.
You may be in an abusive relationship if he or she:
Tries to control you by being very bossy or demanding.
Demanding? Let’s run through the list of duties teachers are expected to perform (on a salary not fit for almost any of them): teaching, classroom managing, babysitting, counseling, resolving conflicts, and performing a variety of menial tasks. I would plan, grade, teach, attend morning staff and committee meetings, calculate grades, fill out progress reports or report cards—with comments! (something positive, something to work on)—eight times a year, collect money for field trips, make sure all kids have their nametags on at all times, call home about behavior and work, schedule and hold conferences four times a year, administer positive and negative consequences, work innumerable ten-hour days and I couldn’t pay off my debt with my salary and bills. It’s demanding work and if you care about doing a good job, it’s mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting.
Is violent and / or loses his or her temper quickly.
I’ve had to handle fights in my classroom and try to calm students who have thrown books, kicked water fountains, slammed doors and screamed at me. I have friends whose students have physically assaulted them. So many students are ready to scream at, push, punch, fight–and in the most extreme cases, kill–anyone whom they deem is acting at all disrespectfully toward them. The level of overreaction and the associated absence of coping skills are disgusting, and for people like me who see the world’s problems as resulting from these animalistic tendencies as opposed to rational responses to situations, it’s also really depressing. I try really hard to set a good example of how to act and react, but somewhere around February or March, it becomes incredibly difficult to serenely deal with the same distracting, disturbing, dishonorable behavior every day.
Your family and friends have warned you about the person or told you that they are concerned for your safety or emotional well-being.
These are things my mother said to me in regards to my then-current profession: “Does your school have metal detectors?” “What’s wrong?” “I wish you would quit.” And more often: “I’m concerned about your emotional health.” Everyone knows and understands the safety risks of being a teacher—they are similar to the risks anyone takes when living in society, only somewhat magnified by the presence of so many irrational beings who are legitimately underage and not technically “adults” (as if most adults act any more maturely). I hesitate to bring up my first year of teaching because almost every teacher has a horrendously stressful “first year.” I don’t want to think about all the days I cried on the way home from work, how many hours I worked just to keep my head above water, how much I yelled and went to sleep dreading the next day, woke up and drove to school in the depressing darkness, on and on.
Teachers in these similar situations will describe going to work as a battle where you are beaten every day and go home feeling as such. If you’ve never been through it, there’s no real way to adequately convey it. In the second year, though it is much more manageable, there are still too many situations where emotional health becomes a question rather than a given. Parents complain, administrators are unreasonable, children annoy you every day to the point of insanity and I’m not motherfucking Theresa—I am a normal human being who at a certain point becomes frustrated by continual and base disrespect. It does not matter how many years you’ve taught—in fact, I’d say the feeling intensifies each year. Pressure from the superintendent, administration, parents and students + long days + a heavy burden of responsibility + low pay + disrespect from both students and society + little administrative support = an amount of emotional stress that’s just not worth it.
You frequently worry about how he or she will react to things you say or do.
Ask any teacher if she has ever given a student a better grade than he or she deserved only because she didn’t want to have to deal with that particular parent’s phone call. It takes an incredible amount of self-discipline and strength to deal with that kind of abuse. In my first year, I had a parent make me cry, then I had parents that infuriated me. There are students who have witnessed their parents blame their teachers for that student’s behavior and academic performance, which then enables the student to continue down the same annoying and destructive path. I do believe that teachers have a great deal of responsibility when it comes to student behavior and achievement, but there is a point where it is out of their hands and up to the students.
Teachers are constantly aware that anything they say to a child, they might as well be saying to their parents, and some parents (like the children they begat) are hypersensitive and prone to blowing things out of proportion, specifically to your administration. Ineffective administrators can also be so worried about parent responses that they will cater to unreasonable demands instead of upholding a standard of common sense and professionalism.
In addition, because teaching is easily a “thankless” profession, too many administrators resort to manipulation and intimidation to achieve desired results from staff. I have experienced the effects of a school leader who treats everyone on staff like children, even in front of our students. It was administrators such as this that infuriated me when I was a student, and they infuriate me just the same now. I couldn’t wait to get out then, and I refuse to stay in a job where I will be treated as a delinquent rather than a competent professional who does her job better than almost anyone else in the building.
Your partner grew up witnessing an abusive parental relationship, and/or was abused as a child.
This obviously happens and often leads to the violent behavior already mentioned.
Your partner “rages” when they feel hurt, shame, fear or loss of control.
Again…completely obvious and abusive.
Both parties in abusive relationships may develop or progress in drug or alcohol dependence in a dysfunctional attempt to cope with the pain.
In this case, this applies only to the teacher. Besides the occasional binging, I never abused drugs or alcohol like I did once I started teaching. When my mom expressed her concern about the fact that I came home every night and immediately began drinking and kept drinking until I went to bed, I explained that I was not going to become a full-fledged alcoholic for the rest of my life, but that this was necessary in order for me to get through each day. It was true. Smoking pot every night, as well, made me much more capable of handling infuriating behavior and stress during the day, in turn making me a much more effective teacher. (Judge me if you want, but instead of marijuana, plenty of teachers resort to abusing prescription anxiety-reducing medication. Pick your poison.) I credit my chosen illegal drug for almost single-handedly revolutionizing my teaching style for the better. Still, it’s unhealthy and unpleasant to do drugs not for enjoyment but out of misery and necessity. Spending your free time numbing your pain instead of enjoying not being at work is deadening, and I never want to go back to living that way. My second year of teaching was a lot better, but there were still too many evenings that I came home, especially on Friday after a long, difficult week and drank to forget and relax the clenching of my jaw.
You have trouble ending the relationship, even though you know inside it’s the right thing to do.
This is, at least for me, the most poignant of parallels in this list. Within the span of one day of teaching, I would go from feeling utter hopelessness, misery and fury to feeling completely uplifted and joyful and back again. I got to walk in the halls or the gym or on the bus lot and get the sweetest, tightest, best hugs from little Ala, Shirley, Anderson and Brianna, who would tell me they wanted to be in my class when they get to fifth grade in a few years. It breaks my heart and brings me close to tears to even think that I won’t get to be that teacher for them. I got to watch my fifth-graders (even the ones who are too cool for school) get excited about learning big words and months later hear one of them ask me, “You said it facetiously?” I got to lead kids to feeling empowered through understanding. I got to lead kids from writing like elementary-schoolers to writing like middle-schoolers, from not knowing their basic multiplication tables to chanting multiples of numbers with confidence and superiority. It’s amazing. I don’t know of any other job that would allow me to do those things. That’s why I had to pinpoint the reason for not coming back. I love some of these kids so much it makes my chest ache. I love these kids so much that I get furious at our educational system for not offering teachers like me an opportunity to do this job as it should be done.
If I had an assistant to do the more menial work, if there were a district-wide strict system of handling students who exhibited absolutely unacceptable school behavior, if our society held the standards as high for teachers as it does for doctors or lawyers, or hell, restaurant cleanliness, and if I got paid two or three times as much, I could see myself as a life-long teacher. As it is, I cannot stay in a job where there is such disorganization, disrespect, and a general lack of professionalism, intellectualism and critical thought. Despite the incredibly beautiful relationships I have had the opportunity of developing, it is an atrociously damaging expectation that teachers deal with so many abusive ones. And it’s why I had to get out. I expressed this to my mother in one sentence, which became my thesis, and she said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right. I promise not to bother you about it anymore.” She knows that she raised me to be strong enough to escape an abusive relationship. She may not bother me about it, but the reality of our situation always will. I’m sorry, but I’m not at fault, so it’s not an apology.