"You were really strict."
That's what the counselor told me. That was the reason why I did not get the
job.
At the time, I was so jittery, just looking for any line of approval that I
could find. So distraught and at a loss for the truth, I was willing to take
anyone else's point of view.
What I did not realize then, which I have since learned, is that to be stablished
is the way to bknow righht from wrong in this life. I have ot be OK with myself
from the word "Go", and everything else will flow from there.
Still, I let the counselor tell it to me "straight". Why was I
talking to her? I wanted a letter of recommendation, and I believed that she
would be agood source, someone who could make a good impression on a future
hire.
For nearly two months, though, she had stalled on writing the letter. I did
not need to be so naive about the whole thing. I had done a terrible job at the
last high school. I did not get the job, and I for one am glad. Indeed, all
things did work for good in my life, just at the time I was not willing to see
it, for believing is seeing, all the way.
She was not the most above-board of professionals about the whole thing,
though. She could have mustered the integrity to tell me plainly that she did
not want ot write the letter of recommendation.
"Arthur, I need to talk to you," she started out.
"Why do you think that you did not get the job?"
I told her that I was not coordinated with my lessons, that the principal
had told me that I expected the students to excel from 0 to 50 in an
accelerated manner.
"Well, let me tell you what the students told me." Then she
related a consistent narrative which I had heard all of my teaching career:
"They said that you were really strict — stringent, even."
"Stringent" — that was a unique word. I had believed the whole
time the exact oppposite:
"I thought that I was a doormat," I blithely admitted to her.
"I thought that I let the kids get away with everything."
"Oh no, that's not at all what they said. If you had been a pushover,
the students would have told me."
Then she tried to cooax me a ltitle bit.
"I know it's really hard, Arthur, but you have to find a way to be firm
but flexible. Even I struggle with this at times."
"I wish that you had told me this sooner. Why didn't you?"
Then she candidately admitted — "I have a difficult time asserting
myself with colleagues."
What an extreme. I was really tough, and she was too nice. Yet here she was
finally telling it like it is, or at least so I thought.
"Arthur, I feel that I owe it to you, that I have to be ethical about
writing you this letter, because I am concerned that you will have a hard time
getting a job in the future. You see, Arthur, the kids have to like you, at
least the kids in this district have to life you."
At first, I thought that was a sensible statement. Since then, I have
repudiated such nonsense. The cult of accomodation and equalit which is taking
over our schools and putting teachers at the mercy of parents and students
starts with this insidious exhoration: "The kids have to like you."
No, No, No, — a thousand times NO! Respect is the word, and the teacher
does not have to earn it — and neither do the students. This nonsense of
earning respect is causing more problems than ever.
At the time, I had so little going for me, I was just willing to take
whatever was coming my way, any advice. She then added:
"Arthur, this is what you need to do: "Take a chill pill!"
"Take a chill pill" — I thought that was reasonable enough, at
the time. Looking back on the whole mess, that was thew last thing that any
teacher really could do. Respect is the number one commodity for a teacher,
something that he should not have to earn just to get through the day. For the
six weeks that I was teaching at Hawthorne, the role had reversed, to
detrimental effect. I was forced into the possition og trying to gain the
respec tof students who never really would. The fact that I was a substitute
made all the difference, for the worse.
No teacher can "take a chill pill" when he is pressed from all
sides, with empty curriculum schedules which push students through two or three
chapters a week, when in many cases students cannot read at the grade level.
Then the culture of sloth and disrespect takes over, in which case the teachers
is on the defensive time and again, dealing with students who in greater number
have no desire to do any work, since they can slide into the half-day program
at the continuation school.
This insanity would put out even the best of teachers. I often believe that
even Jaime Escalante would fail to "Stand and Deliver" in such an
environment.
"Take a chill pill" — the stressful environment breaking out in
our public schools has done nothing to advance the quality of education that
our youth, or our teachers, deserve. The demands are only growing, since the
school year is getting cut shorter and shorter as the budgets from the state
and the school districts fail to provide even the most meager of provisions for
our students.
I would take a "chill pill" in a less stressful environment,
certainly. Schools are no longer such a place. They provide nothing but
challenges and turmoil, especiall for guest teachers or first-year faculty who
have no protection from fearful administrators and terrifying parents and
students who honor no one, not even themselves.
The counselor engaged in the same folly which afflicts many people who have
survived long enough in the system to refuse to do anything but just keep
getting by — they blamed the victim, which in my case was myself, the
bewildered teacher.
Time and truth have worked their magic since then, and I can rest in the
knowledge that I was out of my element from the moment that I stepped onto that
campus nearly two years ago. I can now chill, but without the pills, because I
am no longer at the mercy of complicated, dysfunctional system which in greater
trend has nothing to do with educating and more with placating those in power,
those who receive a pension, and those who have no other purpose but to collect
something from the state.