So, this Q&A is a little different from what we normally do here at ComicBookChuck. To protect his/her real identity and his/her career, this brave teacher has answered the interview questions under a pseudonym. If you like what you see CLICK HERE for the teacher’s blog.
Q1: So Cordelia, the staff at Comicbookchuck reached out to you because you are a special type of unsung hero. You are a former teacher. What made you pursue teaching as a career in the 1st place?
A1:To be honest, I never planned on being a teacher. I was in college for another major when a friend of mine asked me for help with babysitting his children. For about two years I had them with me every day and I worked on learning numbers and letters with the youngest when the older one started school. I really enjoyed helping her learn and when I finished college the opportunity was there, so I took it!
It did not start out easy, but I quickly fell in love with teaching. I love seeing the children learn new ideas and be creative. Watching them grow into adults and crossing the stage at graduation; there is something magical about it all. They are not children anymore and while there is gratification in being the one who helped them get there, it is not about that at all. Actually, when my students ask me why I became I teacher I almost always tell them, “It’s because I want the world to be a better place and I want the people in it to be open minded and knowledgeable. Knowledge is everything.”
Q2: How long did it take for you to become a teacher? How many different licensing exams did you take?
A2:Altogether, I would say it took me five years to become a teacher (including college), but my situation was complex since we were a military family and traveled between three duty stations in that time frame.
I was already in college for another degree program when I decided to become a teacher. When I finished the first two years of my degree, I transferred my credits to a four-year degree program where I majored in English.
Roughly, four years later, I finished college and began training to become an educator through an online teacher accreditation program. The program took about a year to finish, but I was fortunate in that they program allowed me to substitute teach while I learned the necessary professional pedagogy and responsibilities of a teacher. That is teacher speak for classroom management skills and the rules of the profession.
The program is expensive, but it prepares you for the five-hour exam needed to become certified as a teacher. I completed the program and was certified to start my probationary year of teaching while being monitored by coaches from the accreditation agency. During that first year I had to take my English composite test to certify me as an English teacher and I also had to take my pedagogy test to become certified as a teacher. In the state I live in you now also have to have certification to teach English language learners, so it is three tests minimum. If the teacher wants to be a special education teacher, that is another test, and so on. There is a test for everything and each test cost. You also have to be fingerprinted and pay for your license once you become certified. It is a lot of hoops to jump through, to say the least.
Q3: What year did you start teaching, what grade, what was your initial reaction to the job?
A3: I started substitute teaching in 2011 and my first job was in a middle school English class. It was a disaster and I almost dropped the idea of becoming a teacher all together. The students were horrible, the staff refused to help me, and the teacher did not leave any lesson plans. I was up shit creek without a paddle.
On the first day this group of boys got into an argument—I still do not know what about—and one of the boys took another boys assignment, dropped his pants, and wiped his butt with it. I called the principal to report it and I was told to leave a note for the teacher.
After that I subbed at nearly every level in different schools throughout the district I worked in. I found my niche in high school teaching after I did a six-week job for a teacher on maternity leave. (Unpaid maternity leave)
A few years later I started teaching fulltime in at a local high school. I taught Freshmen English and Pre-Ap English at the high school where the middle school I first subbed at fed into. Ironically, I had most of the kids from that disastrous first day, as students in my own classroom now, but they seemed to have forgotten it was me.
Becoming a full time teacher is not the same as being a substitute though and I learned a great deal during my first year of teaching. The students I had in those first classes taught me a lot about what it takes to be a teacher, but my initial reaction to them was one of horror. I thought the whole year was going to be a shit show. I was not entirely wrong, some aspects of the year were terrible, but it was not because of the students.
Q4: Prior to leaving the job due to unsafe working conditions, were there ever times where you considered quitting?
A4:At least once a week.
There was rarely a week that went by when another teacher had to talk me out of quitting because my students needed me. I know that sounds terrible, but I know for a fact that nearly every teacher goes through it. I know teachers who have wrecked their car on the way to work and rejoiced in the fact that they did not have to go to work anymore.
Everyone has seen the comedians who joke about the hardships of teaching, and the memes that float around the internet, but those jokes barely touch on the reality of just how hard it is to be a teacher in the 21st century.
Teaching, for those who have never done it, sounds easy, but it is multiple jobs wrapped up into one and generally teachers are on an island without any chance of being rescued. We are not only teachers though. We are counselors, receptionist, customer service representatives, special education liaisons, curriculum writers, we are the HR department, and sometimes we are the parent of more than a hundred children at a time because their parents do not know how to be parents.
We do not go into the classroom, give a great lesson, grades some work, and go home. No, we have anywhere from 50 (elementary) to 180 (middle and high school) students a day, sometimes more. We take everything home with us and it is a miracle if we have any time during the school day to accomplish anything after we finish completing all the paperwork the administrators have dropped on us at the last minute.
On top of everything we barely make enough money to support our families and our families suffer from neglect because we rarely have time for them. The two months we have off during the summer is not even time off. Many teachers work summer school, or work another job, to make a few extra bucks, and we all have professional development.
It took me a few years to realize that I could not be everything and started to do things a little different, but I was burnt out by the end of the first year. I finally got the best advice I ever got from another teacher, “Smile, nod your head, then close the classroom door and do what is best for the students in your classroom,” and I did. I stayed in teaching because I love the students and I love to teach, but everything else that comes with teaching is suffocating and many teachers burn out in the first five years of their career, if not sooner.
Regardless of all of it, I kept working and hoping it would get better.
Now add in a pandemic and hybrid teaching…
Q5: What is the single most infuriating thing about being a teacher?
A5:The feelings of desperation and helplessness. Teachers are at the mercy of the administrators over them and the administrators usually have no sympathy for the teachers even though they have been teachers before. Teachers, especially those early in their career, live under a constant fear of being fired or asked to resign. It is exacerbated when teachers work in schools with a cult-like approach to teaching. Either you drink their Kool-Aid or you face the possibility of being blacklisted from their district and all surrounding districts. School principals talk to one another and they will not hesitate to throw you under the bus or represent you as a poor and defiant teacher. What I mean by “cult-like” is you either fit the mold or personality they have decided is acceptable, or you are cut out like a cancer. Then they ruin you. I have seen it happen.
Let us not forget all the broken children that we see every day and the rules that make it impossible for teachers to truly help children. Once they leave the classroom, there is nothing we can do. The stuff you see in the movies, where the teacher adopts the student or pays for their college, that does not happen in real life unless the teacher has a rich spouse. Even then there are rules against it in some states.
Q6: What was the best experience you’ve had teaching/ working with students? (My best experience was bringing graphic novels to school for Drop.Everything.And.Read and seeing the students react to the texts)
A6: My favorite part of teaching was working with the students, but I have to say the absolute best part is watching the kids cross the stage at graduation. I especially love to see the kids who I worked hard with to ensure they graduate. There are many students who feel hopeless and drop out of school because no one has faith in them. I try to be that teacher that has faith, even when all others have given up, and I push my students to work hard for their goals.
Q7: Describe the circumstances that caused you to lose faith in the system? (Only share what you are comfortable with)
A7: Let me start by saying that I have worked with wonderful teachers and have had some administrators who excel at their job, but they are few and far between. I came into teaching with the passion to make the future a better place for people from every walk of life. I had no idea what I was getting into.
I had no idea just how late the nights of grading would be. I did not realize I was going to have to put my family on the back-burner for the sake of others or that my health was going to decline so drastically because I did not have time to take care of myself. I could not have guessed that I was going to have to work with tyrants who would try to run my classroom from their own and then try to destroy my character when I refused to let them.
I did not know there were teachers that are bullies, teachers that were incompetent, and teachers that were there for a paycheck. I did not know I would be told to change grades for students so they can be passed along to the next level and my job threatened when I did not. I was unaware I would have to watch students with special needs get treated as less. I had no idea I would be witness to administration firing teachers who were sick with cancer and teachers that were pregnant and on bed rest.
I definitely did not know that parents see teachers as babysitters and the government has turned education into a for-profit organization, much like they have health care. Actually, parents are probably the worst part of it. There are two types of parents, the ones that do not give a shit about their child and expect the teacher to raise them, and the ones that think their child can do no wrong and the teacher doesn’t know how to do their job. Granted, there are some good parents, but they are rare. Most parents just use teachers as scapegoats. It is disgusting. I was oblivious to how toxic the environment in schools after you finish teaching. I have been micromanaged and forced to teach lessons that set students up for failure, but I stayed like a woman in an abusive relationship; I stayed and told myself it would get better.
I did not know how unforgiving this job is and still I cried like a baby when I quit. I felt guilty and was consumed with anger at myself because I felt like I had walked away from the students that need me.
Another thing people do not realize that school is a safe haven for some students. School is the only place some of these students can get food or get away from an abusive home life. Some students are their own parents and must take care of siblings or parents who are addicts. Some students do not even have a home. A few years ago, I had a student come and apologize to me for being absent for two weeks. He came by after school and broke down crying because he was living in his car and did not have clean clothes. He was embarrassed and chose to stay away. He was fifteen at the time, but I am happy to say that I watched him cross the stage a few years later. I can not take all the credit, but I know I was part of the reason he didn’t give up.
I will say I saw that the education system was broken the moment I stepped into the classroom. It is not all rainbow-farting unicorns, quite the opposite. The education system in America is an indoctrination and if you do not get on the bus, you are left behind. Ask any teacher and they will tell you the same. Children who are hard to work with are generally passed along and forgotten.
Q8: What could have been done differently (if anything) to keep yourself and your former students safe?
A8: To be quite frank, there is nothing I could have done different. When administration refuses to acknowledge there is a problem or do anything to safeguard the lives of their students and staff, there is not much else a teacher can do.
Look at what is happening with this pandemic. Children are getting sick and schools are lying about it. If the children are marked absent, the schools lose money, so they lie about it. Plus, most states put out a mandate that if you get X number of cases the school must close and clean, but then the school loses money, so again, they lie about it. They are not telling their staff and when their staff get sick the staff members are still expected to work from home. There is no time off if you get COVID19, you either work from home or use your sick days. If you are sick longer than the provided ten days the district gives you, then it comes out of your paycheck. I have been charged over $250 a day for being absent once I ran out of days. I was in the hospital for a week, and still expected to get my grades in on time, and this was not even corona related, it was several years ago. Parents, students, and teachers are being lied to and everyone knows, but no one is doing anything because parents have to go work and schools need their money. So, I quit. In the middle of a pandemic, I quit teaching to ensure my safety, and the safety of my children.
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Continued on blog, available above
Q9: Is teaching one of the toughest jobs in American society?
A9:Is it a hard job? Yes, undeniably. I cannot say it is one of the hardest jobs though. I know prison guards who would never take my job, but I also know janitors who would take the extra workload to get paid just a little bit more. It is a tough job and it always feels like there are more negatives than positives. When teachers leave teaching, they talk about their time teaching as if it was prison time.
Q10: This is Comicbookchuck so, are there any nerdy interests you’d like to share with our readers? What are you a fan of?
A10:I am a die-hard Batman fan and I play World of Warcraft in my dreams. I used to be an avid player, but I do not have time for it anymore. I also slay at Mario Kart.
Q11: We thank you so much for sharing your experiences and being open and honest with our readers. We also thank you for your service to our country’s youth. Any closing thoughts you’d like to leave our readers with?
A11: If you choose to go into teaching, know that you are going to be bending over backwards to help the children prosper and grow into adults. It is not going to be easy and you will work at several schools before you find one that you are happy with. My experiences are bad, but they do not eclipse the positive experiences. I would not give up a minute of the time I spent in education and if I go back, I fully intend to keep fighting to ensure students receive the education they deserve, even when it feels hopeless.
Investigate the schools you apply to work at too. I have had it rough, and I know others have too, but there are great schools out there that love their students and work hard for them. I know I am a bit jaded by what I have experienced, but I am also aware that if I had not had the teachers I did when I was in school, I would not be here. Teachers are necessary. Teachers stay in the classroom, despite all the bullshit, and they save lives.
