Another Convoluted Year in the Public School System

This points up one of the problems in education. After I left, the new teacher started from scratch, doing the same things over again. Big mistake. Then, the administration never asked me for my grade book. Another big mistake. I had to force them to accept it. They hadn’t asked for my grade book, and then I had heard that administrators had told everyone that I had refused to turn it in.

As one might expect, a highly-qualified teacher with experience is in high demand, and it was not long before another school desperately needed my talents. About a week after my departure from that first high school, I was hired as the full time teacher of physics, chemistry, and algebra at another local high school, some 50 miles north of the first one. As it turned out, the principal at this new school was a cousin of a good friend of mine, although I had never met him before.

From October 22, 2007 until the end of May, 2008, I enjoyed myself and felt that I did a great job. One of the first things that I did was to clean out and re-organize the laboratory prep room. During each class I kept students on task to complete their courses. Sadly, this was the only school that students didn’t want to do any work and didn’t care. Not everyone, of course.

During the previous year, at the high school in Miami, I had students that slept in class. That was the only time in my career where students would sleep during class. No sleepers in this Arizona school. But they didn’t care. They played games or wrote or drew doodles or chatted. But they did no work. And then they wondered why they got bad grades. Like most schools, students “took” to me right away and thought I was “cool.” But a few students resented that I followed the rules.

I sure went way beyond the call of duty at that school. I would stay until 10 PM three or four nights a week, doing school-related work, and tutoring students. However, a series of bad decisions on the part of the principal confirmed to me that I didn’t want to be involved in the K-12 teaching system any more. He is a decent, hard-working man, but, he won’t be there long, I fear. They never are.

I’m really good at what I do. Students learn. They have a good time. It’s wonderful. I give 200%. But bad administrators and “monster” parents have destroyed this system. You get what you pay for. They will have to keep getting to the bottom to hire, and then be disappointed. It’s not that the principal was bad, but he didn’t see education the way I did, so we agreed to disagree, and I elected to leave at the end of the school year. I would have been there long enough for him to find another qualified teacher for physics and chemistry. (He hired a reading teacher to take my place).

As I have always said, we teachers are here for the students. We work for them. We serve them. But knuckle-headed administrators fear parents and politics, and they make bad decisions that hurt the kids. Parents are even antithetical to their own kids. One mother pulled her daughter out of my class with 3 weeks left. So, the junior lost any credit in Physics and in Chemistry for the whole year. Why? Because I reported the student to the principal for drinking alcohol. Bad me (or is it “my bad”?). The mother accused me of not minding my own business. We must protect the students even when they don’t want to be protected. Even if the parents think it’s okay to let their kids do whatever they want.

I remember on that late May afternoon, after my final day of work, as I was driving home with no prospect of full time work, I felt really good about what I had done, and that I had decided to avoid public school teaching henceforth.

1 “Japan’s “monster” parents take centre stage,” By Leo Lewis, The Times of London – Tokyo; June 7, 2008