"Best and Brightest" Are Experienced Teachers

My first published essay appeared in the April 17, 1999 editions of the South County Journal and The Eastside Journal, two Washington State newspapers.  The work offered my perspective on the ongoing struggle for a statewide teacher pay raise.  Hindsight reveals references to the struggle traditional teachers faced in opposing “progressive” transformations of public education.  Editors posted it under their title, “TIRED TEACHER: Worn out from fighting the good fight.”

FAS

"Best and Brightest" Are

Experienced Teachers

My father fought in the “Forgotten War,” the one before Korea.  For those who don’t watch “The History Channel,” that was the China-Burma-India Theater in World War II.  Thanks to him and the other veterans of his generation, my battles have only been intellectual.  Still, I can identify with sacrifices made for a forgotten cause.  I know about forgotten.  I’m a veteran teacher in my twenty-eighth year of service.  Unfortunately, during that time, I’ve had to fight more than the temporary ignorance of my students.

When language professionals abandoned phonics, I refused.  When technophiles invaded math, I still drilled times tables.  When progressives mothballed spelling, vocabulary, and grammar, I kept them on active duty. When multi-culturalists scuttled the classics, I maintained them.  When specialists touted process, I shouted, “Content first!”  When “New Age” experts preached cooperative education, I championed old-fashioned individual effort. When egalitarians demanded equal success for all, I only guaranteed opportunity.  When sociologists found excuses for why kids can’t learn, I insisted they could.  When psychologists packaged self-esteem, I barked,  “Earn it!” 

Grade inflation?  Not in my classroom.  An A is rare; so is exceptional achievement.  Discipline problems?  Not in Portable 908.  My charges still call me Mister, and I’m not their buddy.  The classroom is not a cafeteria, and students can’t really concentrate and chew gum at the same time.  Gum loses.

To succeed, a teacher must get results. To survive over a career, a teacher must practice principled insubordination.  Administrators are not amused.  There are no tangible rewards for teachers, no bonuses for the extra effort required to succeed AND survive.  The “profession” cannibalizes its own.  I am amazed how often I hear some new acquaintance admit, “I used to teach.”

Olympia’s latest scheme to placate the W.E.A. calls for boosting base pay to secure the “best and brightest” new teachers. Sorry, guys, wrong again.  The “best and brightest” are experienced teachers, veterans tested under fire.  New recruits learn their survival skills from vets in the trenches, not rear-echelon ed. profs.  Olympia, why have you forgotten us veterans?  After fifteen years service, experience counts for nothing on your salary schedule.  Where is the incentive to continue to “fight the good fight”?  Olympia, how are you going to KEEP the “best and brightest”? 

I’m worn out.  It’s not my students. I’m tired fighting, and I’m tired of being forgotten.  I remember saying in frustration last year, “Don’t anyone offer me two cents, because for two cents, I’d quit this job.”  I recovered over the summer and returned, but it’s no stretch to anticipate saying at the end of this school year, “Don’t anyone offer me two percent, because for two percent, I’d quit this job.”

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Two Seattle area papers ran edited versions of this essay in mid-April, 1998.  Two weeks later the state legislature gave veteran teachers 10% over the next two years.  This year’s salary fight is over.  We won and I did something.  I ought to feel proud.  Perhaps I persuaded someone.  Maybe I gave pause to another.  Though I wrote for myself, I hope I spoke for others.  Teachers are not at the front alone.

My R. & R. will come again in the summer. This year’s recovery will be more complete than before.  Support from friends and colleagues have buoyed my spirits.  An encouraging letter from an eighty-four-year-old stranger made my year.  Thank you, Mrs. Fallert.  Most of all this victory has taught me a personal lesson I should have learned long ago.

In my original essay, I used the phrase, “fight the good fight.”  I thought it was Hemingway.  I should have done my homework.  The exhortation from the Apostle Paul to his son in 1 Timothy, 6:12 reads:  “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold of eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.”  I now understand why I am a teacher.