I have enjoyed incredible job security over my 20 years of teaching. The last time I was pink slipped was 17 years ago. In the next two years, 11 teachers are being eliminated from my building. We are going to five teacher teams with the foreign language teachers taking a homeroom. Yes, it has kept me up on some nights. There aren’t any districts looking to hire someone with 20 years experience and the salary the would come along with it. In Connecticut as in many other states there is a push to eliminate seniority as a qualification for holding on to teachers. I am all for keeping it…but I could never really put a really good reason on why. I know that if it is instituted, any time a school wanted to save money they would just eliminate those at the top of the seniority ladder. But today I found a much better reason why to keep it.
I was talking to a couple of social studies teachers the other day about a neat project I was doing, a project that I spent a lot of time working on and prepping. They asked me to email them a copy. These two teachers and I are all at the level where we are concerned about being one, or two…three? of the eleven teachers to leave the school. I have a couple more years in the system, so they would go first. As I was emailing them the copy of my plans I had a strange thought…what if we were all in competition with one another. Would I have shared the idea? Would I have sent out another lesson I used to discuss the Japan tsunami? At the department meetings would I share any good ideas? Would I ever take a new student teacher who could go on to take my job?
This is one of the first years I have started to step out of my box and share some of the things I do in my class. I have sent out emails to the department when I use something neat in my class, talked about what I am doing at the copier, handed out cool resources that I have made for my class to other teachers, and I have even been blogging more about specific things I am doing in class. If it came down to me keeping my house, or helping out another teacher…uggg….geezzz…I think I would choose my house.
Yow. Seems painful that we would ever have to choose. Appears to me that teaching is becoming even more isolated than it is already.
Yep…my last line was going to be almost exactly what you left as a comment.
Tough question.
I think I would still have shared but made sure the source (I) was acknowledged.
I am a good teacher because I’ve been teaching so long. The things that bothered me as a new teacher don’t bother me anymore. I’ve become more sophisticated and aware as grow ,and I grow with experience. There is nothing to reflect upon if I have no experience.
As a new teacher, I had many mentors that helped me grow. As you’ve pointed out, as experienced teachers are put on the chopping block to save money, they become less likely to be helpful mentors. Critics will show that as an example of professionals who don’t care about the kids. I care about MY two kids, the ones that I need to feed, clothe and send to college, more than I care about the kids in my class. Why would I help other teachers, other students, if it meant putting my own children’s future in jeapordy?
That I may be in a position to have to choose between the two upsets me as much as it upsets you.
This lunacy will make teachers competitive where they have not been before. No, you will not share your good materials; no, you will not give advice about how to handle a student; no, you will not go out of your way to help another teacher who could push you off the block next year.
Seniority did nothing for a group of teachers in our district this year who were RIF’d. A whole department was done away with, district-wide. Fortunately, a few of them were able to retire with benefits, the others are out in the cold.
What a sobering thought. But I don’t think I could be a teacher without sharing my ideas. I don’t think it is possible to be a teacher working in isolation anymore whatever the risks. However, that said, I haven’t been in a situation where my job is at risk (yet) but I would like to think that being actively involved as a mentor, collaborator, leader, innovator might be of some worth. Who knows? It’s a powerful and thought provoking discussion Paul.