Stitches

[As children,] the grown-ups we trusted did not share the news that life was going to include deep isolation, or that the culture’s fixation on achievement would be spiritually crippling to those of more gentle character. No one mentioned the peace that was possible in surrender to a power greater than oneself, unless it was an older sibling, when resistance was futile anyway. Teachers forgot to mention that we could be filled only by the truth that suffuses our heart, presence, humanity. So a lot of us raced around the rat exercise wheel, to get good grades and positions, to get into the best colleges and companies, and to keep our weight down.

            Most of us have done fairly well in our lives. We learned how to run on that one wheel but now we want a refund.

            Most people in most families aren’t going to feel, “Oh, great, Jack has embarked on a search for meaning. And he’s writing a family memoir! How great.” To the world, Jack has figured out the correct meaning: He’s got a mate, a house, a job, children. He’s got real stuff that he should fully attend to. At best, seeking his own truth is very nice, but it’s beside the point. At worst, one would worry that he was beginning to resemble a native Californian.

            It is not now and never was in anybody’s best interest for you to be a seeker. It’s actually in everybody’s worst interest. It’s not convenient for the family. It may make them feel superficial and expendable. You may end up looking nutty and unfocused, which does not reflect well on them. And you may also reveal awkward family secrets, like that your parents were insane, or that they probably should have raised Yorkies instead of human children. Your little search for meaning may keep you from going as far at your school or your company as you might otherwise have gone, if you had had a single-minded devotion to getting ahead. Success shows the world what you’re made of, and that your parents were right to all but destroy you to foster this excellence.
—Anne Lamott, from Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair

Division and subtraction: the sum of quantifying a teacher's work

Throughout twelve years of teaching in three jurisdictions, I have never given a more than fleeting consideration to the element of time in my teaching practice. If a particular task, assignment, or project was in the best interests of student learning, then it would be implemented—regardless of whether it required one hour or eighteen hours of time outside of the school day to facilitate.

I have never before thought about my job in terms of “my time = money”; I have always thought in terms of “my time = benefitting my students and the greater good.” I have always understood my profession in this way: in contrast to making widgets in a factory, which is a concretely quantifiable job that can be reduced to output of widgets per hour, my job—a more abstract endeavor marked by harder-to-calculate qualitative outputs—is not the proper realm within which to entertain thoughts of keeping a ledger showing how many hours I have worked to achieve desired ends.

The employer’s recent partial lockout has, however—for the first time in my career—begun to shift my personal calculus around how I perceive my role in the education system. While this shift is neither welcome nor easy, neither is ignoring reality—and the current reality is that I am being directed to work less and to commensurately receive less money. This evolving equation—this much less time = this much less money—is beginning to make me feel more than a little foolish: it turns out my work can be quantified, and the thought creeps in that perhaps I have been—by the hour, for many years—much less valued than I ever allowed myself to fathom. Plato was correct: enlightenment is painful.

While it of course is true that the partial lockout is simply an employer tactic in the context of ongoing collective bargaining, it is also true that suggestions made or policies enacted in the short term are not always easily forgotten in the long term. Moving forward, the danger here mostly has to do with the obvious pitfalls inherent in characterizing the teaching profession as one that can even begun to be quantifiable in terms of work hours. We are faced with the potential of a treacherously steep and slippery slope: we do not want such a mentality to become the “new normal.”

Teaching is a passion, not a paycheque. It is a lifestyle, not a job. It is—at its heart—a calling, not a clear-cut transaction of fees for services rendered. Which stakeholder in the education system—students, parents, teachers, administrators, government, society at large—desires a “nine-to-five,” “paid by the hour” mentality to pervade the thinking of our teachers? None, of course. The result would only be a “race to the bottom” in terms of time invested in order to yield the highest results in terms of dollars earned per hour—such calculations have no place in education. Yet, the black and white details of the partial lockout suggest such calculations and invite such interpretations.

Is it with such a mentality that I want to perceive my own work? Is it this attitude that I want my own children’s teachers to embody? The answer is a clear and simple “no.” Is this the manner in which my employer suggests my work might be viewed? The answer is clear and simple and unfortunate: “yes.”