A teacher is not an elf. A teacher is not a saint.

I love my summer vacation, but I dread the onslaught of misguided responses to it. I dread most the most predictable, “Oh! It must be so great to get the summers off!” Teachers in my demographic, between 25-35, single without children, hear it most often at summer parties. People look at us enviously as we swallow our third mojito without hesitation, knowing we can wake up when we want and then twiddle away our day as we please. It’s usually a woman who says it first in a high pitched incredulous voice, “Oh! It must be so great to get the summers off!” She looks like a child who just met one of Santa’s magical elves, a creature who works just a few months in fantasyland to spread joy to children but mostly spends its time frolicking with the other magical beasts. Really, her eyes widen and you see her take a quick, short breath. She, too, wants to be an elf for a moment. She wants you to tell her how. I feel a sadistic compulsion to destroy the fantasy she quickly constructs in her head about her possible elf life, to tell her it does not exist, to break her heart. But then I’ll sound mean and contrary to summer BBQ tone so instead I say with a hint of mystery but no clue to the elf path, “Yeah it’s great.”

Realizing herself that she cannot leave her “real” job, she usually responds with a look and a comment that are indignant, jealous, condescending or any combination of the three. Indignant that her taxes pay for my summer loafing, jealous that they do not pay for hers, condescending to my weak mind which has achieved no better than state employee. She may tell me about her long, long hours, her complicated tasks, and her “high level,” stressful bosses.

Another guest having overheard the conversation will usually interrupt to express exaggerated reverence. She may touch me lightly on the arm and coo, “Oh, but you deserve the summer. I could NEVER do what you do.” She may add the most gut-wrenching phrase, a phrase often used by school administrators as well, “It’s just so noble what you do.” Then, she will often recount to you tales of example noble teachers from her past, or if you’re an inner city teacher as I am, she will tell you the most harrowing tale she has heard about the ghetto youth and shake her head, no. She is saying, “No, it is outrageous how poorly you are paid to deal with those children.”

From my experience then, most of the non-teaching public views teachers as either elves or saints.

The elf

The indignant, jealous, condescending response to summers off is offensive, because it implies, simply, that teachers do not work hard, and even when they do, the work is not intellectually challenging. So, in an attempt to dispel that myth, I will explain the challenges of an urban English teacher in what, for me, is ascending order of difficulty.

#3 Planning:
Now, I teach five classes with at least thirty students each. One class is honors and requires a curriculum different from general English. Unlike some school districts with scripted curriculum, I plan the curriculum and instruction for both with no guidelines other than the state standards.

I love the creative freedom involved in planning lessons, but with more freedom comes more work. By way of guidance for instructional planning my administrator gave me a key to the room where we keep class sets of books available to our English teachers. It is up to the teachers to organize the sharing and distribution of the books. In my school there are no class sets of writing guides, grammar books or vocabulary books, so I have to create the instruction for each of these areas. There are no benchmark exams, common rubrics or written grade level standards. There is only a book room and a state Regents exam. The English Regents is one of the exams New York students must take to graduate from high school. It consists of four essays and two sets of multiple-choice questions in response to a poem and a narrative. The Regents basically tests whether a student can analyze a text of literally value.

As from preparing my students for the Regents, I create everything based on what I believe my diverse population of students need. Students come from Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and every borough in New York. Although 41% of our students receive free and reduced lunch, an indicator of poverty, many of our students are clearly middle class and a few are quite wealthy. Some write better than many college students and some can barely write at all. Some students claim to have never read a book; one student claims to have read half of the books listed in Harold Bloom’s canon. University education professors now insist that teachers “differentiate” (a common catch phrase) their instruction to meet the needs of individual learners. In a school like mine, this call to specialized instruction is like asking a single New York deli to tailor to the specific dietary, cultural and religious needs and tastes of every New Yorker.

Still, I do differentiate assignments and methods of delivering information, but always with the same goal for every student: to teach them how to succeed in the middle class and how to participate in American democracy. Planning curriculum around two goals is more realistic than planning for the specific goals of 135 students. However, with my lack of success, the goals still feel rather pie-in-the-sky.

By lack of success, I mean I have failed to motivate many students to care about Standard English proficiency, so they remain unable to communicate in a way that will open the door to a white-collar job. I know that a sentence like, “At my last job, they was happy with the work I did,” will not only cause the automatic rejection of a candidate for a decent paying white-collar job, but it will also incite condescending jokes once the candidate walks out of the room. My students listen to me when I explain this reality, but many times they still don’t care. (I could engage in a political discussion on language, on whether or not the students ought to care, but that would be another article). Many of my students don’t see themselves as business leaders, doctors, lawyers or teachers. They don’t see themselves as citizens empowered to set and achieve goals. Rather than living offensively and looking to their future, they live defensively, reacting to immediate conflict and seizing immediate opportunities. So, as a teacher of poor, urban kids, I have to make the material immediately valuable for the students to buy into it, otherwise instruction will fail.

It is infinitely easier to motivate students who come from middle class and upper class homes. School culture is middle class culture, and so those students do not have to learn a different language and different code of behavior to be successful. However, I do struggle to give attention to these students amid so many others with what seems to be greater immediate needs. For students who already have the skills that allow them to function in the middle class, I try to push them to develop their talents. But, I know I’ve passed over the talent of many skilled students. I hope someone else had the time to foster it.

#2 Motivating students

As I stated earlier, I plan instruction for the barely literate and the Noam Chomsky reader (literally), and do so in an effort to not only teach them something important but also to keep them coming. Students in my school can choose not to show up with no immediate consequence. When they get off the subway, they can go to any number of public places in New York City, usually unnoticed by truancy officers. If they do not show up, someone from school tries to call their home, but truancy is a huge problem and we don’t always have time to report the hundreds of kids who just keep walking when they pass the school. Even when we do reach a parent, the parents often feel powerless. Many of our parents don’t speak English and they rely on their English fluent children to manage logistical affairs. So, the child often yields more power over the adult than the adult yields over the child.

The school has little power to force the student in school either. We have an attendance teacher whose job is only to keep our kids in school, but she can do little more than act as a motivational speaker or a police threat. The group of kids who hang out all day on the school’s block smoking cigarettes routinely tell her to “fuck off” when she orders them to class. When truancy officers do catch them, they can’t detain them long. They get out of jail and return to the sidewalk to smoke cigarettes all day. Ultimately, teachers must “sell” school as more worth teenagers’ time than anything they could be doing that day on the streets of New York. We need to advertise harder than ads for consumer products and entertainment, which promote hedonism and selfishness. We need to be more persuasive than T.V. shows, movies and songs with the ubiquitous ghetto thug as hero. This is hard.

This year I decided to try something new with my chronic cutters, students who are absent more than present. I spent the first week of the second semester doing activities designed to make kids want to go to school. At the end of the week, I wrote a hand-written, personalized letter to each chronic cutter who had showed up everyday that week. There were only five; the others came maybe twice. I then assigned the student to a partner, another one of the five chronic cutters. They had to call each other every morning to wake each other up. Over the course of the semester, I called the students on my cell phone when they weren’t in class. I paid more attention to their work than any of the other students, often writing page long notes on their papers meant to encourage and instruct.

This worked. There are other strategies that work, but they all take time more time than I can possibly allot for every chronic cutter. If I had 25 instead of 35 students, I could reach more. The ones we miss stay in the street.

#1. Papers. The hardest, least glamorous task.

I could spend much more time planning and giving students personal attention if I did not have thirty-five students per class who need to learn to write a clear essay. Students need to write and to receive feedback to make progress in their writing. They need to revise and revise again based on a teacher’s feedback. I spend most of my time as an English teacher grading papers. Every other English teacher I know does the same.

My students have the most difficulty writing analytical thesis papers. So, I spend most instruction time on outlining and developing an argument in clear Standard English. I teach, students produce and my pen bleeds criticism on their papers. They produce again, and they improve. My pen bleeds on their improvements, and they improve again. My response to papers provides at least 50% of the instruction I give. I spend about five minutes on each short essay, eight to ten on a long essay. I teach 175 students. Grading takes up many evenings.

Proponents of the popular writing workshop approach to English class suggest I don’t need to spend so much time writing all over my students’ paper. Many would even reprimand my free-wielding red pen for its detrimental effect on student fluency and creativity. Workshoppers focus on creating an environment where students learn to love writing and write to express personal ideas and feelings. Workshop teachers give five minute mini-lessons on writing instruction at the beginning of class, lessons that students can choose to follow if this wish. Feedback in these workshops comes first from other students, and the teacher feedback is suggestive rather than prescriptive. In these environments I have read about but never really seen, students produce creative texts that reflect a personal style. However, as shocking as this may sound, I do not see my job as an English teacher to be primarily a facilitator of the development of my students’ personal creative writing voice, even though I’m sure my students and I would have much more fun in an environment where that was my primary role.

I do want my students to develop a personal voice, but they do already have one. Like anyone, they could deepen and refine it, but to suggest that my inner city students lack a voice or lack fluency in their writing is wrong. Almost all of my students write poetry, rap music, notes to each other and journals. They don’t need me to teach them that writing is fun or they have something to say. They know that.

They do not know how to organize ideas in a paragraph or write complete sentences in clear Standard English syntax about abstract questions. Their Standard English vocabulary is limited, as are their skills in punctuating and spelling. Their speaking skills reflect their writing skills. If they don’t learn clear Standard English expression, they won’t find a white-collar job of any kind, ever. Politicians will not listen to them when they complain. Store managers will not listen when they insist a clerk has overcharged them. Waitresses in restaurants where middle class and rich people eat will be rude to them. Real estate agents will condescend to them. Car salesmen will overcharge them. Banks will hesitate to give them business loans. Doctors will offer less thorough explanations. Judges will be less sympathetic. The list can continue, because people assume that if you communicate in non-Standard English, you’re stupid.

So, while I would like to run a creative writing workshop, I just don’t have much time for that. Sometimes I feel like my eyes are bleeding from grading all these papers, and it never, ever feels like enough, because this sentence is from a real paper from my class, “I think that most of the people don’t know wich to be good or evil it because of what caint of people they hang out with they just scaird that if they dond do nothin bad when they are with the bad group something will happen.” But, as a result of prescriptive feedback, most of my students can write a competent analytical thesis paper by the time they leave. I know that sounds less exciting than writing portfolios with poems and narratives, but it’s necessary and it’s very hard.

The saints

With the planning, motivating, grading and of course teaching, filling out paperwork and going to meetings, I would say I work between sixty and seventy hours a week now. In the first few years I worked much more, between 80 and 90, I’m sure. But that amount of work was damaging to my relationships and my health. The workload may have been less damaging if I felt I was successful but I did not and I do not. I would feel satisfied if every single one of my students could write a competent analytical thesis paper, but only the students who show up learn this. I would feel successful if all of my students could write the paper and learned to enjoy reading a variety of complex literature. I can imagine the elation I would feel if all of my students could write the paper, enjoy the literature and progress in the development of their personal creative writing voice. I might die of joy if all of my students could write the paper, enjoy the literature, progress in the development of their personal creative writing voice and discuss a variety of complex texts in a logical way. But the truth is that as long as a percentage of my students do not learn what I want to teach them, I will feel like a failure often.

I will feel like a failure in spite of the fact that I have only received glowing observations in all my years teaching, I have won awards and I have heard plenty of praise from parents and students. I will feel like a failure, because I know if I slept less and only worked, I could teach them all what I know they need. The movies are true. Stand and deliver is true. I only witnessed a made-for-the-movies teacher once, Elena Mejia, and she truly did nothing but work. Every day she made at least one home visit. Elena Mejia began teaching after all of her children were grown and she divorced. She gave all of her energy to the students. She and the other made for movie teachers are saints. I admire them, but I am not them.

So, when people call me noble, I feel guilty. When I hear, “You’re so noble” I think of my friend, Elena Mejia, and the other movie teachers, and I feel guilty that this person thinks I’m like them, and then I feel guilty that I’m in this social situation talking to this non-teacher rather than working like the other made-for-movies teachers. I think about my students constantly; I view the world through the lens of a teacher. That means I pick up the trash on the sidewalk for use as props while we act out Shakespeare (don’t tell them), or I convince the person I just met at the party to come and speak to my class about journalism. But when I hear “you’re so noble,” my teacher thoughts oppress me. The effort to bring the journalist feels trivial compared to the truly noble efforts of teachers I am not.

Aside from creating guilt, the assumption that nobility is what inspired all inner city teachers to do their jobs demeans the profession and the students. You don’t call doctors or lawyers or other well-paid people who provide a service noble unless they are working for some organization that does not pay them, because we assume doctors and lawyers are fairly compensated. It seems then, that teaching is not a job, but a sort of calling. A teacher must teach despite the low pay for the job. I think this sense in the public that good teachers receive some sort of calling and follow it like saints allows the public to sleep sounder in their shiny big homes after voting “no” on a property tax increase. The noble teacher doesn’t want money! She just wants to serve our children. I even heard one person say at a party, “I wouldn’t want my children taught by someone who became a teacher for the money.” Well, why not? Do we say that about doctors? I would go to a doctor or lawyer who went into it for the money. The better she performs, the more clients want her services. I am, by the way, a pro-union teacher who would like to be paid for performance.

Also, the phrase “you’re so noble” demeans my students, because it implies they are horrible people to deal with. Now, I know some schools do have terrible behavior problems, and I have experienced one school like it, and I left because I did find the students horrible and I am not noble. But I will say that the good teachers who stayed at that school liked the students and did not struggle to maintain a calm tone in the classroom. They liked the kids, and the kids liked them. My school does not have serious violence issues, but they are urban kids and sometimes my classroom does resemble Welcome Back Kotter. Still, the best part of my job is spending time with them. We do teach each other all kinds of life skills. I did start to feel “noble” with one extremely difficult student this year, and so I had him transferred out of my class. I’ve never done that before, but this sense that I was giving to this student without receiving did give me a “poor me” feeling, and I didn’t think my attitude was good for the student. I felt myself acting in a condescending way toward him, being overly polite and distant. So, for both of our sakes I moved him to a teacher who said he like him. This may not have been noble, but I think it was wise.

Despite the challenges of teaching, the teachers who come back after the summer, come back because working with kids is fun. We often quit, because we realize we could have a good time someplace else with more respect and better pay.

If the public would change its perception of teachers, local politicians may not need to spend millions of dollars on dog and pony shows designed to lure new teachers into the profession. Seventy-five percent of teachers quit within their first five years of teaching. The reasons for this are varied, but one and surely not the least important is perception of the profession. Teaching is a difficult but ultimately enjoyable profession that merits better pay and stronger support. It is not a mission for saints or elves. The world does not have enough saints to fill the classrooms. The job is too hard for the elves.

Ms. Mettle