I Didn't Sign Up For This

Policy consequences make a mockery of 'giving something back'.

“I didn't sign up for this”.

I was talking with a colleague this past week and she said those exact words. This is someone who's been teaching as long as I have, almost 30 years, is from Mount Vernon, went to Mount Vernon high school, is a product of the school district, and lived - until recently - in the neighborhood. She got into teaching almost 30 years ago and worked for almost 20 years at the local middle school. For the last seven or eight years she's been at the high school, working with some of our most troubled students in 9th grade, trying to get them to reach an appropriate level of English so that they can compete, function, and thrive in these United States. 

Last week she told me she's very tired and doesn’t want to come to work any more.

This wasn't what she signed up for. When I asked her about it, she told me that for four years she hasn't been able to have what we used to call a ‘regular education English class’. The administration has given her the ESL / ENL English classes so that she had a co-teacher in the room to help the students who needed help learning English..

The thing is, she didn't sign up for any of it in 1996. She is an example of doing it right and giving back. Because she's a loyal local product, a product of the environment, someone who returned to her hometown and has dedicated multiple decades to her hometown - she went with it. Now she's tired.

What she had signed up for and done for the 1^st few decades of her career was to teach high school and middle school English. In an area like Mount Vernon, that meant students of varying abilities, varying levels, oftentimes students with wretched home lives. In the urban setting it means seeing difficult things, like students getting kicked out of their houses and being forced to live in a shelter or realizing that the girl in the back who's very quiet and slightly disheveled is living in her car.

All of these things happen and she always tried to help. 

A few years ago this woman asked for (and received) a 12th grade schedule. 9th graders are more difficult to teach and the maturity level is low. Recently the freshman classes have borne the brunt of a recent influx of ‘migrants’.  After a few years, as the demographics of her home city change, thanks to the open open border policy, she's ready to quit. She's counting down the last few years because she feels like she's finished - drained.  She didn’t ask for it.  Neither she nor anyone else voted for it, but policies have ripple effects and this is one of them.

This brings us back to the title of this article. She told me she didn't sign up for teaching English as a Second Language. She signed up for teaching students Orwell’s Animal Farm and explaining to them how it's a warning about the subtle but serious rhetorical traps and vicious evils of socialism / communism. 

She signed up for the opportunity to read through some of Zora Neale Hurston's work and explain to students that a strong independent black woman can become a literary icon as well as a college professor. She wanted to take students on literary journeys that allow them to not only explore different eras and areas, but also their own minds.  This is the kind of literary analysis that fosters an open mind and critical thought.

But that's not what's happening anymore and she's had it. 

Because now, even the 12th grade classes are ENL / ESL classes. She can't explore the wonderful journeys inherent in literature. She has students who don't understand the language. She has to slow everything down. She has to try to see to it that there's some kind of base level of understanding of English itself before she can even try to walk students through the subtleties of literature. That's a very different task than going through an Edgar Allan Poe horror story, or slowly navigating a multi layered Langston Hughes poem. 

I guess the people at the top don't think of these things.  Perhaps, to them, the rabble who inhabit a district like Mount Vernon don't matter. You can understand how the people who make policy don't have to care about the regular people. Everybody knows how everybody's going to vote and a politician's main directive is to stay in power.  If you're in New York City or Mount Vernon or the local area, and you're a Democrat - you have a job for life.

But this isn't really about a political party. This is about a person who's a proud American. Here you have someone who has wanted to give back to a community in need and performed honorably for her entire career.  Now it's going to end on a negative note.  Cynical forces hellbent on destroying These United States and harvesting votes - forces beyond her control - have conspired to get her to end her career. Teaching was more than her career, this was her calling.  Suddenly, it’s coming to an unhappy end.

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