Like many things in the glare of the media, teachers are either saints or whores. Almost all of the teacher movies I know have the teacher-as-martyr as the central theme. The hard working, creative teacher connects to the kids, achieves success few believed possible, and then burns out in an Icarus with a half twist. The other set of movies follows the "Ferris Bueller...Bueller....Bueller" Theme where the teacher is an incompetent bungler. When we have this conversation, I want to pull away from the media reflections and go back to our own reflections.

I found last year's discussion of homework fascinating and career transforming for me. On this list, many of the same folks battled about the amount of homework to take home, until one voice shouted out that she brought home no homework. In the ensuing hullabaloo, the "no homework for me" voices pointed out that all of the grading takes away from family, wedded, and personal lives. T.S. Eliot commented that our world would be known by thousands of lost golf balls. More famously, Prufrock measured his life in coffee spoons. I was measuring mine in rubrics and red pens.

I have been a teacher for 16 years. In my early years, it was a 100 hour a week job. Photocopying, prepping, advising, grading, and doing the committee work over and over, year after year, summer after summer. As a result, I am a really, really good teacher. I can bring the lowest up and the highest higher. Every other aspect of my life withered. When my wife and I went to Boston for two troubled births, I taught my classes by videoconference, e-mail, and the web. I put the students on a video for the week of the actual birth. I returned to the classroom two weeks later. Such choices looked noble then, selfish now.

These days, I have been resisting the "nobility of sacrifice" in becoming a teacher and the Nick Nolte "Teachers" low comedy, and trying to make it a job. Now, it is a job that I love and enjoy. I identify myself with this job. But it is not my identity and it fits in my life in "fourth place." If you ever turned on the TV so the kids would be quiet while you finished grading a set of essays, you should know precisely what I mean.

All that said, I want to pick a fight over Elitisim. When I taught at St. Mark's of Texas, the gentleman who did the book buying had a MLK poster up in his workspace that said something like "If a man is called to be a streetsweeper , he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well. " I admire that sign and sentiment very much. (Note that even MLK uses the word "job")

God, however, does not let you know what your calling is. That same quote works if you replace streetsweeper with concert violinist or mathematician. Most of my male students believe they are called to play professional football, or, failing that Madden 2004 for money. Many of the parents are very happy to have their kids skip college in order to sell plumbing supplies. And most of the friends and classmates can't think past Saturday night.

So, in that atmosphere, I believe in raising the bar as high as I can. Grades are merely metaphors...they are shorthand for skills and knowledge. If a parent only values a grade, I will value it as well, and then stuff as many worthwhile skills into that grades as I can get. In our lives and especially in high school, we don't know what God calls us to do. Therefore, it is only prudent that we look under the hood and see what equipment the Big Guy left for us.

Parents, Kids, and Peers don't want to look under the hood. They don't want to be special or have an ability that makes them different. God, No. Teachers have to do that and they often have to go against the wishes of everyone else to find it. How many students have you failed that became great? Many. How many of the kids who hated you and keyed your car in the spring, come forward sheepishly four years later with a thank you? Many.

If you teach difficult work skillfully, but a student has not been given the English machinery under the hood, the worst you have taught are those skills (Reading, Writing, Thinking, Speaking) and some personal fortitude. Disappointment is the underwear for all adults. We all wear some.

I also do not honor hypocrisy. I think placing undue importance on the grades is ridiculous. All grades are metaphors. They dry up and blow away in a few years. Those spoiled suburban kids wearing the golden rings should learn to fight hard. The American promise of AP is that a 5 earned at Martin Luther King High is the same as a 5 from St. Paul's. A 5 is a 5, whether in the barrio or B Street.

So, no more guilt for me. Escalante, Mr. Holland, and the rest of them can continue to burn out in Brueghel's sea. I am the guy at the plow.

(And, just a little Catcher for you: "A foolish man will die nobly for a cause, a wise man will live humbly for one.")

B

On Sunday, August 17, 2003, at 07:15 PM, Susan van Druten wrote:

Wow, only one teacher out there responds to the charge! This is kind of amazing. Are we so beaten down with the miracles the world expects of us that we take the whipping without a sound? Phyllis is right: the system wants our blood or our guilt. Escalante gave his blood and the rest of us give our guilt [Who else is giving blood so that Escalante's burden is being repeated?]. At your school? Not at mine. Not even close.

Here's another take: Elitism is the belief that you are no good unless you are an academic success. If you pitch in and help out at your family restaurant when you could be taking an AP calculus test, you are a disappointment to the American dream and America (and no-child-left-behind) rejects you. Who is a teacher to make these decisions for a student and her family?

There is nobility in hard work wherever one finds it: studying for a test or peeling potatoes. I honor that. What I do not honor is hypocrisy: signing up for AP or honors and then complaining and rationalizing your way to success. Escalante might have had to beg inner-city kids to grab the golden ring, but in most of America we have to force suburban kids to realize that the golden ring they are wearing might not fit.

Susan

On Saturday, August 16, 2003, at 01:27 PM, Phyllis Fleischaker wrote:

Jaime Escalante destroyed his marriage and his health,

if I remember correctly. Is that what the "system"

wants of us?

Phyllis Fleischaker

Blair HS, Silver Spring, MD

Re: anti-AP expansion article

From: "Susan van Druten" <bosvd@cpinternet.com>

Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 21:38:14 -0500

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I exchanged a few emails with Jay Mathews (the author

of the article

that started this thread, "AP Courses Not for

Everyone, Educator

Says").

He wants to know why Jamie Escalante's kids (75

percent of whom were

from homes that qualified for free and reduced

lunch, their parents ALL grade school dropouts, and

most having so-so

grades) can manage to all get 3's or higher on the AP

calculus test and

the rest of us seem to have so much trouble with this

goal.

Well, what is wrong with the rest of us? How come we

aren't the best

teachers in America?

Susan