A Teacher Who Hardly Teaches.

The principal of my school, where I am new this year, is a Texas Aggie. He cultivates this image to an extent even he is probably not aware of; to me, it's ironic that a quarter century after leaving West Texas in my rear view, never to return, I find myself staring into one of those canny faces I knew so well back in my days in the oil "bidness."
Cultivating an distinct persona has become a recognized enough technique to make it into the enlightened texts written by actual teachers. And in my experience, both as a student and a teacher, the best educators always create a memorable one. There was the senior English teacher who always wore her satin blouses a bit too unbuttoned, exposing a generous slice of bust that perhaps softened the impact of the "Redundant!" that she scrawled across countless themes turned in by us wannabee literates. The college professor that never stopped pacing during lectures, always wore spotless white shirts, polished shoes and narrow ties - and this was the seventies - and taught behaviorist psychology well enough that I can, over thirty years later, give a fair lecture on the power of random reinforcement schedules. As a teacher, I got to know others - the huge math teacher who on occassion exacerbated his height with homemade six-inch platforms on his shoes and a fuzzy red wig, whose voice could be heard across the entire school, for example. My own persona? Oh, the Eastern European marathoner with a heart of gold, I hope... though who knows what the kids really think.
Today my Aggie principal met with me to evaluate my performance in the classroom. He'd observed me earlier in the week, and the kids - were perfect. They ennunciated perfectly, made just enough mistakes to make it a convincing show of learning, participated in reading aloud, moved their arm and shoulder muscles in rhythm with the sounds to activate kinetic learning, all with no visible reluctance. I could've kissed them all. They fell apart five minutes after the Aggie left the room, but he didn't know that.
So his evaluation was, as most of mine are, almost embarrasingly positive. He thought I'd set up a safe learning environment where kids could reach for success without fear of failure. Which was pretty much what I'd aimed for.
Too bad that teaching is maybe a tenth of my job.
What I really do for a living is satisfy - attempt to satisfy, and usually fail - a bewildering bevy of consumers. There are the parents who can only sometimes be reached, and who, when they are reached, are more interested in finding fault with teachers than in helping their kids. There are the teachers who are sometimes understandably stymied with students whose disabilities are so pervasive that there doesn't seem to be a way to get through the storm to anchor an idea.
But most of all there are the rules. There are rules about paperwork that must be completed by a certain date, signed by a parent, whether you can reach them or not. There are meetings that must take place within similarly inflexible dates. There are rules governing kids who move in from out of state, with documents so incomprehensibly written, eventually you just sigh, file them away, and understand you are starting from square one.
Supervisors occasionally arrive from central office, purportedly with advice or help. But really, their function is similar to that of Tim Gunn on Project Runway. Ever watch that show? Usually it's about eleven at night, and the designers are frantically trying to finish some impossible project, like, say, create a gown for a model and her dog that are inspired by a favorite ice cream flavor, and Tim sails in, sniffs over a dress or two, then sails back out, singing "Make it work!" Which is quite entertaining in a reality show. Not in actual reality.
This year there's a fresh new hell. The mandate has come down that all students with special needs are to be tested on every objective on their individual education plan, every week. This means every kid with an IEP needs to take somewhere between 2 and 6 tests a week, in addition to what they already complete in classes. This means someone - me - has to determine what level the tests should be, acquire the tests, copy the appropriate number, gather the students in during their elective period, administer the tests, score the tests, and plot the scores. Every stinkin' week.
This is a job all by itself, and has meant, for me, ten hour days nearly every day of the week. It's meant that planning for instruction gets done in the last twenty minutes before the kids walk in. It's meant that teaching, actual instruction, is taking a back seat to testing.
"The kids get plenty of tests already!" my Aggie principal sniffed in our meeting. But he and I both know that there's nothing we can do. I'll keep giving the tests.
By this afternoon I was in tears, of either exhaustion or frustration, hard to say which.