Educators are the Veruca Salt of Working Professionals (Part 2)

 

Oompa-Loompa Doopiti Doo...Turns out this blogpost has a part 2!

After the above article came out in my local newspaper, I decided I had to revisit a recent blog post. To reiterate, "Educators are the Veruca Salt of working professionals...Part 2...Electric Bugaloo" (Working Title)  

After reading the title of the article, I decided I had to read it in order to understand why a district wouldn't want to take free money from the State to incentivize educators with bonuses for those who have proven to be, in the words of Will Smith, "The best of the best of the best." As some background, the state of Utah is piloting a program that would allow districts to apply for a pot of money that they could use to award educators based on criteria they choose. The criteria have to be put into a formal plan and approved by a university that was chosen for this specific purpose. 

In terms of dollar amounts, the program will award bonuses to the top 25% of teachers in the following allocations: 

Top 5% = $10,000

Top 6-10%  = $5,000

Top 11-25% = $2,000

The kicker is if you work in a high-poverty school, those figures could be DOUBLED!!! This means educators could earn upwards of $20,000 a year! 

Why would districts turn this money down when all we hear about is the horrible pay educators receive? Some of the reasons they state in the article speak about teaching as a cooperative field and when you make them compete for money, they no longer want to cooperate. Valid point, I suppose. 

Another complaint is that the districts wouldn't know how to make it "fair" so that all teachers have a shot at earning the money. What criteria would they select to be eligible for the money? Are they only going to offer it to those teachers who teach in areas that are tested? What measurements would they use to understand which teachers are performing better than others? It's hard to compare a teacher who is assigned AP students to someone teaching remedial reading or math in high school. 

These types of decisions are not easy to make, but they are especially difficult in education. That's why districts post their payscales online because they can never show that they are being unfair. There are only a handful of ways to earn an educator salary increase and most districts boil it down to two things: the length of employment and your educational level of attainment. It's very cut and dry because it needs to be. They can't have a pathway that says one teacher is actually better than the other because teachers don't like being compared and contrasted.

They will gladly accept more money as long as everyone gets an equal share, but dividing the pot based on student performance...that is unfair. This is why education will never change in the ways that it needs to. The people in administrative roles who actually have the power to make changes lack the backbone to make hard decisions. They lack the intestinal fortitude to make those decisions because as soon as they decide who deserves the money, the ones who didn't will be screaming back at them "But I want a Golden Goose too!"

"I Don't Think About You at All"

 

During a scene in "Mad Men" Don Draper, the main character of the show, decides to pitch his ad idea to a company and purposefully leaves another pitch from an up-and-comer behind. The co-worker, rightfully angered by Don's attempt to sideline his ideas, calls him out during an elevator ride. During their brief conversation, he say's to Don, "I feel bad for you." Don's reply is simple, but cuts through the young up-start. He merely says, " I don't think about you at all." With that one line, Don leaves the elevator as a sort of mic drop moment. 

This is probably one of the more memorable scenes from the show, and for good reason. It's brilliantly acted and very relatable. I know the scene is meant to show that people so high up on the totem pole of business don't waste their time thinking about those lower down than them, because it would be wasted time. Their job is to stay above the fray and move forward. I know I often felt like our district administration had this same thought about teachers, which is sadly true in my experience. Lately, I've come to think about this scene in a different light.

My mentor Rafe Esquith wrote in one of his books that he would often get the question about why he decided to teach. He said he stole a line from a movie about a baseball player that once said he worked so hard so that years from now people would ask "who's that walking down the street?" and they would respond, "that's Rafe Esquith, the best teacher there ever was." It took his future wife to look him in the eyes and say that's the most narcissitic thing she's ever heard. The sad thing is, I used to aspire to such praise and adornment early on as well. 

Recently, a coworker passed away due to cancer. I never really worked with her, but she was always friendly and we would say hi as we passed each other occasionally. I had no idea she had cancer and it came as a surprise when I saw the email announcing her passing. They sent along the obituary, which was nice, but not a lot of other fanfare. I had another coworker pass away several years ago quite suddenly. I went to his funeral and some coworkers showed up to say some nice things, but in the end, they replaced him and the work moved on without him, just like they did with my most current coworker. 

My dream of becoming that teacher that everyone knew and respected while walking down the street was just that, a dream. Maybe some students would remember me if they saw me in the newspaper's obiturary, or maybe a handful would come to my funeral, but I know the district wouldn't care one bit. At most, they may send a box of Crumble Cookies to my family. I know this because of how I was treated when I left teaching back in 2016. 

When I originally left teaching, I cried several times thinking about the students and teachers I'd be leaving behind. It was a hard decision for me to make, but one I knew I had to make at the time. I put a lot of thought into my letter of resignation, stating how hard the decision was and how I'd love to come back and work someday. The only response I got back from the district was a letter stating I was in breach of contract and owed them $1000. Just remember, they don't think about us at all!

Educators are the Veruca Salt of Working Professionals (Part 1)

 

Oompa Loompa Doompa-dee-do, I have another blogpost for you!

One of my favorite movies is Roald Dahl's "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." While channel surfing on a boring weekend as a young lad, I would always stop on a channel if the original 1971 movie was playing. I loved the story, the sets, and the music. I consider Pure Imagination one of the greatest songs of all time. One of the other things I have enjoyed about this story is how my understanding of it has changed as I have grown older. 

After watching the new Broadway production of Matilda one year (another favorite of mine), I decided I was going to start every year reading Roald Dahl as part of our guided reading groups. I'm not even sure guided reading is a thing anymore, but the way we did it at our school was by splitting up students according to reading levels and Dibels scores. Each of my student groups ended up reading either "Matilda," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," or "The Twits." 

My main focus during these reading groups was to help them learn how to read and understand punctuation and dialogue. I would give them specific characters to read and they would have to use expression to act out their parts. Another thing we focused on was the parts of the story like the setting, characters, and theme. We talked about the elements of a story arc like the exposition, conflict, climax, and resolution. 

One interesting thing that stuck with me when we were reading "Charlie and Chocolate Factory" was our discussion about the protagonist and antagonist. The Protagonist is somewhat easy to understand, but it wasn't until we really thought about the antagonist that we realized it wasn't even a person. The antagonist in this book is not Willy Wonka, but it's the Factory. Every room had something that tempted a kid to throw caution to the wind and prevent them from becoming the heir of the chocolate factory. 

Each character has a nasty behavior they manifest like Augustus Gloop (Gluttony), Violet (Pride), and Mike Taevee (Sloth). All of the characters are memorable in their own way, but Veruca Salt holds a special place in our hearts because I think we all know that type of person and have had to deal with them at one point.

When I think of Veruca Salt I think of an entitled girl who wants her daddy to give her everything she wants without having to work for it or earn it in any way. This is why I think, educators are the Veruca Salt of working professionals. I gave away the plot in the title of this post, but I'm a sucker for exposition I suppose. 

The additional point I wanted to make is that the machine, which is public education, is merely enticing them to act on their worst desires. Every year they want more, but what are they willing to do for what they want? Work more days or hours? Improve student outcomes? Before we cave into Veruca's screams of "I want it now!" we should first ask, what are you willing to do to in order to receive the golden egg (or squirrel, for the book lovers)? If we keep giving into demands without getting anything in return, our education system will surely end up in the same place as Veruca. 

To end on a positive note...