Crestfallen...a bit

For one of my graduate classes I had to interview several teachers. In my summary I noted how most all of them referred to teaching as a noble profession. People wouldn't say that about too many professions (fire fighters, police officers, and maybe a few others).

I had also known outstanding individuals who I viewed as sacrificing careers that were more lucrative monetarily for something more meaningful in other ways. In Fallon there was Mr. Johnson. At Lone Peak the other physics teacher was brilliant with a father who was a dean at BYU. The chemistry teacher had scored a perfect 36 on her ACT. The biology teacher had once made 98 of 100 free-throws. There were also those who weren't worth their weight in dirt (as least as far as their teaching goes) and found a job where they could do quite little and still make a decent salary. But my perception was that on the whole, teachers were a talented, unselfish lot.

Two recent events have caused me to reasses my paradigm. First, I was at a faculty meeting where we were given a list of possible places to make budget cuts. The overwhelming concensus of what not to cut were teacher salaries and teacher benefits. Other than that just about anything was fair game (new teacher bonuses, class size reduction funds, money for textbook, etc.). The basic message I got was, "When things get tough, forget the school and the students, you have to look out for yourself."

The second was at a school board meeting (I wasn't present at this one) of another district where it was voted to send layoff notices to all people hired in the last two years rather than cutting any teacher benefits (thank you union - I love how you're always looking out for me). A group of "tenured" teachers at the meeting literally aplauded the news.

Maybe I was naive to put teachers on a pedastal in the first place, but these two events really did astound me. Maybe most teachers didn't go into education with a desire to give. Maybe some in the arts and letters saw it as one of the only feasible options to work in their field of interest. Maybe they started out with altruistic motives, but lost them sometime during a T4S evaluation. Maybe the recession has put them on the defensive.

I wanted to get this down before my district holds a similar meeting tomorrow night. If things go the same way I think I'll lose my unbiased perspective (if I were the kind of person who does that, I would've put a winky smiley face here). Fortunately I'm feeling really calm about my personal situation lately. Not that I'm feeling that my job is all that safe (I'm third to the bottom on the list of science teacher hires in the district), just that things will turn out well in the end.