[Today, I found out that one of my colleagues from my teaching days in NYC, Jon Goldman, passed away. Jon started at Beacon the first year of the school and had taught for several years before that. Jon was ten years older than me which doesn’t seem like much now, but when I was a 25 year old first-year teacher, that made him a wise old veteran of teaching in my eyes. Jon was one of those teachers who looked out for other teachers. He always felt that the job had to be livable . that as amazing as we wanted to be for the kids, we had to make sure it didn’t come at the cost of our own sanity. It was an important lesson for a young teacher like me to learn, and one I’ve kept with me ever since. It is with Jon in mind I write tonight.]
The overwhelming majority of the teachers I know work incredibly hard. When one factors in the paper grading, calls home in the evening, email answering and lesson planning (to say nothing of coaching and other extra-curricular work), the hours spent can easily push up and over the 60-70 hour a week level. Moreover, the hours themselves can be incredibly intense, working with students who bring all that they – good and bad – to the classroom each day. Learning how to successful navigate the minefield of student emotions, classroom expectations, state standards, test scores, parent expectations and every other pressure point in the teaching life can be daunting, and it doesn’t surprise me when people cite statistics about how many young teachers leave the profession. Turns out, the job is hard.
So it falls to teachers and administrators and policy makers at every level to really look at the teaching life. What do we ask of our teachers every day? How can we figure out how to do this job well, do it with true commitment and care, and do it over time, such we can develop a truly masterful teaching faculty in our country one that can see a roadmap to teaching for a career with passion and grace. The energy of a youthful teacher must transform into the skill and technique of a veteran teacher so that the job does not always need to be done by Herculean effort alone. And we must always ask ourselves – how much gets put on a teacher’s plate? Is it always a livable life? Hard? Sure but doable, achievable, rewarding for good, hardworking people of honest intent.
If we want teachers to be advocates for our children, we must ask ourselves – are we advocates for our teachers? Let us make sure we build schools that understand the value of sustained and sustainable excellence of all members of our school communities.
Rest in Peace, Jon. Thank you for teaching me that valuable lesson.
