Teaching

Teachers are Human

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 2 Comments

It’s been 7 weeks since my husband died suddenly and unexpectedly on what had been both my birthday and a perfect day together. Needless to say, my world and life has been turned upside down.  We have two amazing children (13 and 11) who need me now more than ever.

I also have 103 teenagers who depend on me.

This post on Twitter really got me:
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This is where I see broken pieces of our public education system.  I was given 4 days bereavement from my principal.  Two of those days were “free” days as negotiated by our union.  In the public education system, I am a number. I am a cog in the wheel. I am not a person.  I am not seen as an individual human.  My principal doesn’t have the right to allow me as much time as I need to heal.  I cannot afford to take time off w/out pay or benefits.  I am now the financial security for my family.

There are no concessions granted.  Lesson plans late–I am notified.  Observations–continue on even though I might not be at my best.  No exceptions.  We are all the same.  We are not humans; we are teachers  And somehow, our personal lives don’t matter and are expected to be pushed aside.  Yes, my students deserve my best everyday–but sometimes my best is not possible. But I can’t take a day–because I only get 1 per month. More than that and I get docked a full days pay.  I can’t afford that.  So what other choice do I have?

This might not be so obvious to me if I didn’t have something else to compare it to, but I do–I taught in a private school for almost 6 years.  I know that my private school would have given me as much time off (with pay) as I needed to be whole again. To mourn. To take care of my kids. To take care of this new life.  I could take any random day I might need w/out worry of being able to feed my kids or to have it taken into account at contract time.

But our public education system doesn’t take time to treat teachers or students as human. We are inputs and outputs.  We are bodies in rooms. We are cogs in wheels.  We are expected to check off boxes and get results. We are expected attend meetings that could be emails–because we need to meet or we don’t trust you’ll read out emails.

We are expected to do hours of online training, craft lesson plans, call and email home, and teach and get all of this done in our contracted hours.  I am trying hard to not work during my non-contracted time–because I need to heal and I need to take care of my own children.

We are expected to attend PD that doesn’t apply to us and to sign in and be present. We are expected to tow the line and do what the district wants instead of what is good for kids.

I know there are plenty of functioning public school districts, but even those don’t always value teachers as human.

I just want to be valued as a professional (I’m pretty sure that is why your hire someone with almost 20 years of k-12 and college teaching experience, two content area degrees, and a Ph.D.). I also want to be seen as a human who has a life outside of school.

Teachers just want to be seen. I want to be seen.

A Series of “First Dates”

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

I am on the job market.

And it sucks.

I am excited about the prospects I have and I am excited about potentially making the shift from high school English to middle school English. There is also an Experiential Learning job I am interviewing for today that has me really excited.

But that excitement is so short lived.

It has been a while since I have had to look for a job and know that I MUST get one. My family has become accustomed to food, clothes, electricity, etc. It isn’t that dire really. My husband is the bread winner–but we need 2 incomes like most families in America.

The job search is slowing breaking my spirit. I know it shouldn’t. I know I am an amazing teacher and that I just need to find the right fit. But rejection sucks. The going back over “why” am I not moving on. It feels an awful lot like “why doesn’t he like me?”

I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t move on in the process of my very first interview. I was nervous and made the mistake of being succinct in place of selling myself. I didn’t use all of my time wisely.  So, I learned. I got better with each interview—I think.

I have had 9 first interviews. Of those 9, I secured 3 second interviews and was notified by a 4th that I was not moving on.

Of these second interviews:

  1. I was notified that for 1–big city public district that I was moved into the recommended for hire pool.  This means that a building principal can select me for a building level interview. Still more waiting and possible rejection.
  2. I was notified by another that I am not moving on in the process. I was one of 4 candidates brought in for the 2nd round.
  3. Second interview is set up for first week of April

I am still waiting to hear back from 4. I know that I will not hear back from at least 3 of them until the first week of April.

But this is hard. It is hard because you don’t know what it is that made them decide to pass you over. Was it that I didn’t use the right words? Did I not explain something as clearly as I could? Do I sound too ambitious, too pleasing, too pushy? Was it given to an internal candidate and you were just part of the process? Was it really just not a good fit? Was it that your outfit wasn’t exactly right? Were they looking for someone with less experience? Were they looking for someone less socially activist?

And we never know.  We never get the answers to these questions. We just have to go on to the next interview and hope that something different happens. We just have to stop second guessing and be ourselves and be authentic.

That for me is the hardest part–not the being authentic (full disclosure–that is partly why I am looking for a new job. I had to be me and know that where I was wasn’t a fit). It’s the accepting that maybe my authentic self isn’t appreciated or understood.  That no matter my experience, my education, my dedication to student, I am not what they are looking for.

How do I accept that?

 

 

Teaching Something That Matters

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

I have to shake the dust off of this place. I’ve been absent and the cobwebs have fully taken over–both this space and my mind.  I have been consumed with teaching, learning, and parenting. My energy has been used to think and I am sad that my thinking (so much thinking) has not been written down–beyond tweets of 240 characters or less.

I started this post in April 2018 and here I am still working hard to teach something that matters. To make a difference in not just the lives of my students, but in the lives of the people they interact with.  That is a tall order.  I teach in an all-boys Catholic high school. Our demographics are 94% white and about 70% of our students are middle to upper-class. Our school tends to lean a bit to the conservative side.  I have been working over the last few years to disrupt the narratives my students have about others. They live in a pretty protected bubble of thought and it is important that they examine that thought before they move onto college, etc.

This semester I have decided to have my students listen to Scene on Radio’s Seeing White podcast. When I first listened to the podcast this past summer, I knew it was something that I wanted to include in my curriculum.  I just wasn’t sure how. I did a lot of thinking and contemplating and finally settled on listening to an episode a week (will fill our semester) and video responses via Flipgrid.  Scene on Radio has a curriculum guide that accompanies the podcast and I provide some of their questions as prompts to the video responses, to help guide students.

I will admit as the first responses are pouring in, that I am nervous. We aren’t a perfect school, but one of the main tenets of our school is Education for Service, Justice, and Peace.  I feel strongly as a parent, that we have to teach these values explicitly at times. I have also invited other faculty members in school to participate and several have expressed interest.  I feel it is important that my ideas aren’t the only ones that students hear.

I am pleasantly surprised that many students picked up on the idea of institutionalized racism and we’ll be doing some unpacking this week about racism (prejudice + power) and how that is entrenched in our founding and our institutions. We’ll talk about how “reverse” racism isn’t a thing and we will also be looking at logical fallacies.  After teaching logical fallacies, I am going to ask students to listen back to their first video responses and see if they used any fallacies–we had a lot of Straw man arguments happening as well as weak analogy and false dichotomy, and post hoc.

I am interested to see if they can recognize these fallacies in their own arguments, as well as the arguments that our politicians are making these days.

**edited to say that in January I resigned my position as the school and I were no longer a mission/vision fit. I am sad that I won’t get to see my students expand their thinking and be exposed to narratives that disrupt their biases.  But white supremacy requires the ignoring of history and there was a lot of resistance to my pushing of narratives that remind us of our White Privilege and how we have benefited from centuries of White Supremacy.

Surprise Gifts of Thanks

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

Yesterday I received a surprise message in my school email.

Ms. Finley,
I wanted to thank you for the great teaching you provided to R this year.  He was always working on a project and this is what he needs to be a better student.  I know being an excellent teacher increases your work load.  So I wanted you to know that I have appreciated all of your extra work to ensure that R and the other students become better writers and communicators.  I also appreciate you reading over J’s papers when you never even had him in class.  You have gone above and beyond the normal teaching duties and it is has been noticed.  The entire Vianney family is lucky to have you be a part of the staff!  Thanks again and I hope you and your family have a very relaxing summer!
Take care,
Student’s mom

I must have read the email 10 times.  I’ll probably print it out and keep it forever.  It seems small doesn’t it?  But as a high school teacher, there is generally very little thanks.  In the teaching profession there is often very little thanks.  Being a good teacher takes time and yet many people look at the “hours” a teacher is in the classroom (and the bit of time we don’t have to go to school in the summer) and thinks “boy do they have it easy.”  So much of what I do in the classroom, takes hours of prep and research time.   On average I work 60+ hour weeks.  I arrive at school at 7am and often get home close to 5pm.  Then I work after my own kids go to bed at 8pm until about 10:30pm.  So, about a 12 hour work day on average.  I work all summer, reading professional literature to ensure that I am using the most effective practices.  I attend meetings and workshops.  I lesson plan and tweak assignments that didn’t work and read all of the books I’ll teach, again.

So, getting an email from a parent who recognizes that to do my job well, I have to make my own sacrifices.  I assign work that matters (I hope) even if it means more work for me.  That is my job.  That is what I signed up for and I feel very lucky to be able to teach.

For every note like this I get, there are others who question the amount of work (it’s too much) or the level or work (it’s too hard). These interactions with parents are also important, because it gives me an opportunity to explain why I assign what I do and to discuss the realities of life after high school.  I am a professional.  I spend a great deal of my time honing my practice (like Drs do) and ensuring I am doing the best for my students (like Lawyers do for their clients).  It is my job to push my students to reach (or at least) see their potential.

Teaching is often a thankless profession.  If teachers internalize all of the attacks on teachers, then change in education can never happen.  We have to empower teachers to do the right thing.  Good/Great teachers are always learning and always trying new ways to bring learning to students.  They know.  We don’t ask hospital administrators to decide the best way to perform surgery.  We shouldn’t trust politicians with the amazing power to determine how a teacher teaches his/her students.

I am very lucky to work in an environment that values teaching and treats me and all teachers as professionals.  Students thank me regularly upon leaving class (which I still find awesome) and many understand why I push them (even if they would rather just be lazy–but hell they are teen-aged boys).

With all this said, thank your teachers.  A simple note expressing a gratitude for the work they do.  An acknowledgement of the sacrifices they make in their own lives to ensure that your child learns and becomes the best they can be can go a long way.

The Reality of Teaching

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

Now that teacher appreciation week has come and gone and I’m wrapping up my first year back in the high school classroom, I have to be honest about what I do as a teacher.

I parent all day. I thought I gave that up when my kids went to school and I went to work. And I guess I did give up day parenting when I had an office job. But as a classroom teacher, I parent. I spend a great deal of time helping the 15/16-year-old boys navigate the world. I hold their hands as they try to think outside of the box.

I push them to do the work and not take short cuts (But sparknotes is so much easier to read Mrs. Finley). I reprimand them for constantly touching, kicking, talking, farting, etc. I reinforce the idea that they need to respect their education and the desire of others to learn.

The majority of my job is not teaching, but guiding them. And often it is like guiding a donkey. They are stubborn and want to take the easy way out as often as possible. I challenge them to do more than the bare minimum. I remind them to tuck in their shirts and to pick up their trash.

I also get to teach them how to revise their thoughts. I teach them that nothing is perfect (or good for that matter) on the first go round. I give them feedback and push them to revise and redo. I teach them that there are no free rides, but that there are opportunities to fix mistakes.

I teach them how to be men and adults. I teach them how to think and share their thoughts. I also teach them English–but that seems to be the least important thing I teach.

Teachers do more than teach. Sometimes teaching is the last thing we do. My job is exhausting and I work 12-14 hour days on average. I sacrifice much of my own outside of school time to ensure that I am ready for my students (who often aren’t prepared). I grade papers, give feedback, and read all that I assign.

Teaching is a thankless job. Very rarely do we see the fruits of our labor. But we do it anyway. We do it because we know that we make a difference even if our students and their parents don’t.

So, thank a teacher. Chances are age has sacrificed more than you came imagine to educate your child beyond the subjects they teach.