The Brass Ring

The “brass ring” in public education is college—grades and test scores that secures a student’s admission to a prestigious university. While the Common Core State Standards focus on “college and career readiness” (the subject of another blog altogether), in reality school culture preferences college and neglects what used to be called “vocational training” and is now known as “career technical education.” This unconscious bias against career readiness does our students a disservice and is unworthy of our calling to educate the students who come to us.

I graduated from high school with basic skills in photography, electronics, printing, woodworking, metal work (including welding and machining), and auto mechanics. Upon graduation, I swore a mighty oath that I was done forever with formal education, that I would never again set foot on any school campus (the irony in that is also the subject of another blog). I joined the Navy, received an excellent education in electronics, and entered the civilian workforce as a quality control engineer for a major defense contractor. My post-baccalaureate earnings have never matched what I made before going back to school.

I’m not complaining—I knew before I went back to school what I was getting into—rather, I’m pointing out what we as public school teachers must keep in mind: college is not the only path to financial success or personal fulfilment.

Early in my teaching career, one of my best students, a good scholar and gifted writer, already knew what career he wanted. His ambition—his dream—was to be an auto mechanic, and maybe someday to have his own auto shop.

Some of my colleagues thought and even said, “What a waste!” They thought that it would be a waste of his talents and gifts to skip college in favor of a blue collar career. Perhaps they even felt entitled to advise this student to reconsider...and we teachers have enormous influence in the lives of our students.

I asked questions. I asked the student what he knew about auto mechanics, and learned that at age 13, he had already spent two summers working in his uncle’s shop. He even took me to see, and spoke knowledgeably and passionately about the tools and workstations and the various tasks he he could already perform. His keen intellect proved invaluable in diagnosis and workflow analysis. His communication skills had already benefited his uncle’s business.

He read voraciously for pleasure, he wrote poetry, he loved history...and he wanted to work as a mechanic.

I think that’s awesome. Education enriched his present life—the one he was living at that moment—but college would have been an expensive, unnecessary, inappropriate deferral of his dream.

And odds are good that he is making more money than I. That’s awesome, too.

A Bad Example

File under “Unintended Consequences.”

Students look to we teachers for examples of how life works. The lessons they learn from how we live our lives may sometimes be more significant than what we teach directly. And too often, we are forced—by expectations, by
our own ideas about our work and how we should do it, by toxic workplace conditions or inadequate compensation—to set a bad example.

We may be expected to update grades constantly, to respond to e-mails at any time of the day or night, to put in untold hours outside the work day (and yes, I acknowledge that the nature of the work is such that some work outside the workday is unavoidable). We may believe that that is nothing more than the price of the profession, or it may bolster our sense of self to martyr ourselves for the sake of our students. We may have no choice but to compromise our ethics, following a supervisor’s mandate when in our professional judgment that mandate is bad for kids. We may be forced by poor pay to take a second job to make ends meet.

And students are watching. They see teachers answering student questions via email at 11:00 at night. They see teachers grading for hours a day after school. They see teachers sacrificing their home life or their passions or their health for the sake of their students. They see teachers say one thing with respect to testing or learning or life, and doing another. They see teachers spending most of their waking lives working to provide for themselves and their family. They see and they learn.

They learn that adults live to work. They learn to put themselves last. They learn that ethics are negotiable. They learn that “success” is working all you can just to avoid falling further behind.

These are not lessons I want to teach. I want my students to learn what it means to have quality of life; a work-life balance. I want them to learn to make themselves a priority. I want them to learn to stand firm on ethical issues, even if there’s a cost. I want them to learn their worth, and to demand it in compensation.

I do what I can to set a positive example. As a teacher, I set limits. I do my duty to students, but not at my own expense. I model balance between work and non-work life. While I work for them, I do not answer their beck and call. I make myself a priority. I strive for integrity; to do what I say and to act according to my expressed principles.

When it comes to compensation, however, I am torn. I love my work, but it doesn’t pay very well. I am left with bad choices:

• Work at something I don’t love that is more lucrative
• Work as a teacher and take additional work to supplement my income, at cost of my leisure
• Work solely as a teacher and live a diminished lifestyle, but one within my modest means

None of those choices sets the example I would wish for my students, but I see no other choices.