Temptation is not just what can lead you into behaviors that are violent or abusive (physically and verbally), illegal or unjust (let’s accept that most laws and societal conventions are actually meant to ease humans living with one another), dangerous or destructive (the effects of stupidity are rarely confined to the stupid) and/or immoral (open to interpretation).
Temptation is also that siren call towards personal decisions and attitudes that are self-destructive in the long run physically, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually.
(The following essay begins with my career as a teacher. I will try not to include too much about the state of teaching and public education; these subjects seem to bore- at best- the Daily Kos community. This is about life’s work and purpose.)
Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meetup for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing is welcome.
I began my career as a full-time public school teacher when I was in my mid-thirties. I am now aged fifty-two and I acknowledge a need to teach for at least a dozen more years; I will not be fully-vested in California’s retirement system until I am nearly sixty-six. In spite of a degree and certification in History, I have been an eighth-grade Math teacher for the last ten-plus years. Despite my Daily Kos name, I have rarely taught Algebra. I have been a Math teacher for eighth-grade students who are not "ready" for Algebra.
I teach the students who are one, two, three and more years behind the average. I teach the students who are learning English. I teach the students who kept to themselves in class and never caused trouble, but also never learned a thing about Math (and, often, any other subject). I teach the students whose school disciplinary folder has expanded into its second volume. I teach the girls who missed a large part of their seventh grade year because they were having their babies. I teach the boys who can speak to their fathers only through their mothers because the son doesn’t know enough Spanish and the father doesn’t know enough English. I teach the girls who bully other girls (and try to bully me; they seem confused by why that doesn’t work) and I teach the girls who are bullied by other girls. I teach the boys who believe knowing five things is enough; the challenge each year is too convince them to learn a sixth.
I teach poor kids. I know what poverty is and is not; it walks into my classroom every day. Poverty is not dirty; it is often well-scrubbed, trimmed and brushed or combed. Poverty has clothes for school but often faded and a bit thin because they were either handed-down from siblings or donated. Poverty needs me to have a supply of pencils and paper for when students "forget." They don’t forget; they don’t have. Poverty is kids rushing to arrive at school before eight o’clock in order to get breakfast. Poverty is kids looking forward to nutrition break and lunch because they are honestly hungry. Poverty is kids, in private and after a lot of work to get them to trust me, looking at me sadly and shaking their heads when I ask them if they had dinner the night before. Poverty is kids who prefer hooded-sweatshirts because those keep them warmer when they sleep in the garage, the motel room or- occasionally- the car.
And despite what nightmarish visions some people have, my 95%+ Latino students are Americans (as are the rest, a broad mixture of mostly Vietnamese and Chinese). They stand up and pledge allegiance to the flag. They walk in and out of my classroom speaking English. They study for and pass a test about the United States Constitution. They watch television, see movies, read Harry Potter and Twilight books and listen to music in English. They follow American professional sports and always want to know what my favorite teams are. My analysis and predictions about the World Series each year bring my classes to silence as students shush each other. I am carefully nonpartisan.
This is a transition year for me professionally. My Principal wants to extinguish the non-Algebra eighth grade math classes. Next year, all eighth-graders will take Algebra. The best will succeed in one-class-period sections, as they do now. The rest will struggle through two periods, as they do now. The only difference will be that my special cadre of students will be in the two-period sections. Some will succeed. The rest...well, they’ll take Algebra again at the high school in ninth grade with a different textbook and methodology.
My Principal wants to know what is needed to help this transition and help the students affected by it. What special programs, tutoring, trainings and workshops are needed? She asked all of the Math teachers but she was looking at me.
I will need to be trained in the adopted Algebra program, as well. There is very little chance that I will teach something else. I would have to bump somebody out of their position (and definitely not in History; my Principal has said that would be a "waste") and someone would have to take my job. No one wants my job.
This is where the temptation comes in. This transition will be a challenge for everyone involved and I will be "walking point" (cue the teacher alone in his room, shaking his fist towards the school and district offices while whispering, "I’ll sheow ye, ye bastards.") I am competitive intellectually; I know I can learn the protocols and methods of the Algebra program, though I know the research on which it is based is faulty, the text is not Standards-based and the lessons are vague, which requires teachers to supplement specifics. There’s an assumption that all students have certain skills entering the class; the existence of my classes for the last ten years is disproof of that.
I’m even tempted to start a Masters Degree program in the teaching of Mathematics. It’s all online. Once the degree is final, my salary would go up. I’d have a weapon to carry into the endless meetings my job requires.
And I’m good at what I do, anyway. Recently I started a unit on solving equations. My students had graphic organizers (people learn better when they have something to do), individual students stood up and walked around the room to demonstrate ideas, students said the key vocabulary chorally and individually, students were guided through examples and what was expected was explicitly taught and modeled. Students raised their hands and their eyes begged me to call on them, including a couple of the kids who wouldn’t say "boo" on Halloween. Here and there, kids would say to each other, "I get this now." And when the class ended, the students were surprised when the bell rang. A couple groaned.
It certainly didn’t hurt that my evaluating administrator was in the back of the class taking notes.
It’s tempting to just go on. It’s tempting to remember only the good days. It’s tempting to take on the challenges. It’s tempting to think that I should- change that to "ought to," as in a moral imperative- continue what I do because, just because. It’s tempting to think of this as what I am called to do.
And yet I can see myself through the coming years as I am now, only more so: frustrated. Exhausted physically (I write rarely now on Daily Kos and it’s not because I have nothing to say). Emotionally drained. More and more likely to think, "How can I get through this day?" rather than "What can I accomplish this day?" Less and less likely to be recharged by an almost-hidden smile from Miriam or Clarissa because I complimented them, a self-satisfied nod from Juan because he finished his work, the hands that shoot up when I ask, "Who can show me the answer?"
I fear I will become a bitter old man by retirement. I fear the cost, and I fear how I may pass that cost on to my students as I’ve seen a handful of teachers do. I know I could fight that decent into Hell, but I wonder if that is my pride and my competitiveness talking to me and not my good sense. Just because I can do something well, and perhaps do something good, doesn’t mean I’m not ready to move on to a new task. There is a great danger in not recognizing when one is done with one path. Sisyphus was no sissy; he believed himself equal to any task and deserving of any opportunity. When trouble came his way, he refused to see himself, and his choices, as its cause. For that, he was condemned to endless frustration and a pointless life.
I am a teller of stories. I became a teacher so that I could tell stories. I read, watch and listen for stories. I want to study stories, not math. I don’t even know how to do Sudoku puzzles. I do know the power of words, thought and ideas; it’s time for me to accept the challenge of awakening that in young people. Perhaps I can convince them to vote, and volunteer, and run for office, and see their lives as better because they did something rather than because they owned something.
It’s time for me to give my best to what I’m doing just this one more time. I’ve done it before as I’ve ended one part of my life and moved on to something else. I know what it feels like. I even know that there will be enough success that I will be tempted again, "Do I really want to stop?" But it’s time to fill out the transfer papers and seek out the letters of recommendation. This time next year, I want to be "historyowl," (Daily Kos denied me this name when I signed up; I wonder if it’s available now?) and no longer "algebrateacher."
In the desert, Jesus was offered the power over hunger, the power over death and the power over all human beings. To accept any of these powers would have taken him away from his true nature and purpose for living. To accept any of these powers would also have limited him; he would possess, and be judged by, only that power. He would have imprisoned himself, and all of humanity, to depending on supernatural intervention and control instead of the hard work of accepting the freedom of choice.
I wonder if our political leaders are trapped by their temptations, believing that they do "good" simply by being what they define as "good." It’s obvious that any party-line hack has succumbed to the temptation of ambition and, perhaps, personal corruption. When they look in the mirror, do they really see someone on a mission to serve the public good? Is their daily work going to help anyone? Is anyone free because the individual politician is in his or her position?
Can each of them think, "I’ve accomplished that, and I’m on my way to doing this, too?" If they have nothing they’re going to do for people, why do they stay? One of the most soulless persons I have ever met was a former Member of Congress. I read his ghost-written autobiography. I wonder how aware he was at the good he didn’t do and the good he tried to stop.
How many politicians see the day they leave office as a day that they can say, "The people were right to put me here?"