Not every educator has a single moment that crystallized their intentions to become a teacher.
I do.
In my senior year amidst the scorching August heat of an exhausting band camp rehearsal, our band teacher stopped us. “Put down your instruments. Follow me.” We ambled through the grass after him. We sat down, a blur of words were spoken about music and life and purpose and everything in between, then we stood up. The world didn’t look as I had left it 30 minutes prior, as if someone had tilted it the way window blinds can be adjusted a few degrees to let in more light. I still remember the exact thought that ran through my head, verbatim: “If I could have the same impact on other people that my teacher just had on me, I wouldn’t want anything else for my life.”
And yet, I didn’t act on this intention for a full two years. A year after this moment, I waywardly enrolled in higher level calculus courses at the University of Michigan, convincing myself I was going to be an electrical engineer. Nearly another year went by and I botched an audition to get into the U of M School of Music. I switched to the (dark? light?) side and enrolled as a Michigan State University music education student that fall, one of the most pivotal decisions in the many crossroads I have slipped through in my life.
There is distance between intention and action in our life choices, something resembling the space between lightning and thunder. In my case, that distance was two years. The decision to become a teacher was far from an overnight process for me, governed by millions of small decisions and course corrections.
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Not every educator has a single moment that crystallized their feelings of how painfully broken their dream to be a part of the education system is. Maybe some don’t have that story to tell yet.
I do.
It is January 2019 and I am a music teacher of eight years. I am striding into my elementary school on any other Wednesday. I barely have time to greet my school secretary at the door before the power snaps off. It is 7:45 am, a full hour before school starts. The power flickers back on for a brief five minute period then cuts out again. Teachers are left in the literal and figurative dark, having to both assist arriving students with dangerous tasks (such as walking into pitch black bathrooms) and to communicate to parents dropping off their children that we have no idea when the power will be coming back on. A rumor is spreading that we will in fact NOT be cancelling school. Things will proceed at 8:45 am as normal. I think to myself: Ridiculous. And yet there I am at 8:45, standing in front of a classroom full of kindergartners, expected to teach them music as the latent heat in our building leeches out into the 30 degree weather outside. I am standing there in the dark, my phone flashlight in hand, pretending to be leader for a large group of five year olds as I cower at the threat I feel for my safety and theirs. I nearly taught the entire 45 minute music class before the power came on. Our superintendent sent us an email: “I appreciate your flexibility and willingness to go with the flow on behalf of our kids.”
Some of you reading this might not think teaching during a power outage is a big issue. Some of you thinking that might even be teachers yourselves. This is because teachers are conditioned into the narrative of being superheroes each and every day. They are conditioned to accept that something like working during power outage, in the pitch dark, in the middle of winter is “normal.” There is a word that has been tumbling around endlessly in my mind for months now: “Gaslit.” Teachers have been gaslit to teach during power outages, to teach under the specter of school shootings, to teach in buildings laced with black mold and warped flooring like the teachers and students down the road from me in Detroit have to do for 180 days each year. “Go with the flow,” we are told.
Teachers are crying for their lives (and the lives of their students, parents, families, administrators…) not to go back to physical buildings this fall. What you have to realize is that the lightning of this intention was created years ago. Ironically, it took a power outage for me to see its flash. The pandemic has perhaps awakened this flash for all teachers. And now I so badly want to feel the thunder of action, the thunder of millions of educators finally refusing to teach in an unsafe and underfunded profession, the thunder of refusing the pennies on the dollar we accept for the expectation that we must fill every societal role for our young children, the thunder of refusing to accept the systemic inequities that run rampant through the halls of every school building in America.
To be clear: teachers are more than willing to still teach. Back in March, we were willing to adapt everything that we do in the physical classroom to a virtual environment at the drop of a hat without any training or guidance. We desperately want to hold on to that intention to teach, the same intention that drove eighteen-year-old me to swap between rival colleges and put in a decade’s worth of work instilling hundreds upon thousands of students with the vibrancy and vitality of music. But we are going to need affirmation from you that our jobs extend beyond being babysitters to free up a stalled economy. We need to you to affirm that our health and safety matters.
Teachers are essential, but we are not sacrificial. We have had enough.