It's About More Than Bricks and Mortar

I was unusually late. When you are in education, punctuality is next to godliness. It was 7:59 when I made it. You are always conscious of time in a world where you live by the bell. I arrived for my monthly department meeting which was already in progress and as I joined my supervisor and two fellow guidance counselors I sat quickly, striving for normalcy despite a pale face and puffy eyes. Eyes have a tendency to look like that when you have definitively learned the day before that your only brother has probably no more than 48 hours to live. I didn't fly out to Chicago to be there as I had been there a couple of weeks prior. He was in a coma. Besides, somehow I felt he was already with me. My sister-in-law bravely held his hand as he entered the next world.

At the end of the meeting that I managed to mutter through, Carmela, my supervisor, asked me if I had a first period class. "Yes," I replied. "Good, I am going to observe you." A feeling of horror came over me as I realized it was my tenure year. I was in bad shape. I had come in because I now knew I would need to be out for several days and what would I do at home under these circumstances. I had planned on showing a video that morning, part of our curriculum, but driving to work I knew my introduction and post-discussion lead were bound to be weak. "It wouldn't be the best day, Carmela" "I just found out my brother is going to die." Kindly, she said, "Ok, we'll do it another time." The bell rang and I went to class. There is not much time for discussion in a school day, no matter the weightiness of life. I went to class and as any teacher knows, kids are amazingly perceptive. One look at me and in a room of eighth graders quite capable of giving any teacher a run for her money, there was not a comment out of turn for the entire period. I was grateful. Somehow, kids always know when something is wrong.

With all the talk of teacher evaluations, I often think of that morning. I think of a prior evaluation I had unannounced in a class clear across the other side of the building my first year. As a guidance counselor first, a student's problem can't always be cut short though I have teaching responsibilities. I came flying into my sixth period class with a tray of brownies I had promised them for completing a project and while taking attendance, my peripheral vision served me well as I quickly realized I was being observed. I gave one imploring look to a group of students whose minds and hearts had already left the school by May of 8th grade. Somehow, my lesson was spot on and so were they. Later, my supervisor told me they had no idea who she was while they were waiting for me and kept screaming that they hoped Mihovics was going to show up with the brownies.

A compassionate supervisor and the good Lord on my side and I did fine on my evaluations. I believe I am good at my job and I take my responsibilities seriously. But I often think of what if. In my 25 years in business prior to changing professions, I was judged through performance management evaluations. But I was judged on a year's worth of work that was concrete and specific and very often measurable. No one came unannounced to sit next to me three times during the year for forty minutes and judged whether I was able to produce Hemingway copy in the allotted time. While other departments and clients can impact one's ability to perform at maximum, they are at least adults. Your life and livelihood is not at the whim of 29 seven year olds, twelve year olds or seventeen year olds and dependent to a great extent on whether they want to be there, whether they are even there, their and their parents' respect for education... the list goes on and on. And in business, even if one did have a poor evaluation it was not published with the chance to live for eternity online, so that parents feel they are getting the raw deal if your evaluation is not the highest. Business is too smart to tell a client their account manager has one of the lower averages on the bell curve.

I don't pretend to know all the answers. I believe in accountability also. But I do know that talk that teaching is the only profession with tenure is completely false. Police, firemen and all civil servants operate through seniority. I know that ignoring all the other characteristics of American society - our fascination with technology for hours of recreational use, hours and hours of time spent watching TV, an unwillingness and lack of desire to read anything more than sound bytes is misguided. And I know that with the constant degradation of teachers by some government leaders and some in the public, with salary reductions through requests for astronomical amounts toward health care, in a profession with no upward mobility, in an environment that no longer offers the slow and steady guarantee of good benefits and security as a tradeoff for perks and bonuses and diverse experiences, that the best and brightest may not join this profession in the near future.

Sometimes, when we have nothing left to cling to in order to account for things, we go for the bricks and mortar. While it is an honor and a choice to occupy bricks and mortar for 180 days every year, it seems it might be time to stop blaming the professionals inside the bricks and mortar and have intelligent, comprehensive and realistic discussions about the big picture and what goes on outside those buildings as well. It's not all about us.