I have been a middle and high school music teacher for thirty years.
I don't want to leave, but I think it's time.
In thirty years, I have been in six buildings and three districts.
I stay for five years, then I go. I tell people I'm like Mary Poppins, I go where I'm needed.
Which is a bald faced lie, I've always been in privileged schools with strong performing arts programs. All I had to do was swoop in and maintain the status quo.
The first time it happened, it seemed natural enough. My first job was a suburban building with an amazing, award winning program. I took over for the teacher who had been there for 25 years. He had left a deep legacy, and it was not difficult to keep the momentum going. After four years, once I began to get to know the kids, I became engaged to my college boyfriend, Kyle. His job was out south, so we decided to move that direction after the wedding. I got hired in the other district easily, as the urban sprawl was getting under way.
The second time, I was pregnant with my first child, and thought I would take a sabbatical. My building would not allow a sabbatical; my choirs had won many state awards, and they did not want the program to languish for a year under a one year substitute. Their relentless pursuit of trophies was reprehensible. So I quit, and was hired at the middle school-which was, after running two strong programs that frankly Ate My Life, very much like a sabbatical. I stayed there another five years until my son started kindergarten.
When my son was five, he was in a private school near our home, and I stayed local again and was lucky enough to find a job nearby in a new building that had opened in the still expanding district. Looking back, it's really surprising I was able to switch as frequently as I did, as performing arts jobs are not easy to find. We are usually a one person show, unlike the cores who have teams, and someone usually has to die for one to get hired.
I had become aware of my commitment issues with buildings, and started to wonder about the PERA program. If I was going to bounce around, I had to make sure that for the last three years of my career, I was working at a high salary. My fourth year I ran into a friend from high school who was a former teacher. He had only taught a few years before leaving for an investment firm. His specialty was teachers. This would have been 1996 or so, he was convinced the PERA set up was not going to make it through our careers. So I started saving with his firm, and that took the pressure off of me to worry about my last years. I only had to make sure that what I made was enough to bridge the gap left after Kyle's salary.
The first building I worked at, there was an art teacher who retired after 33 years...in the same building. I remember wondering how somebody does that? The mere idea of walking the same halls for more than a few years makes me cringe. Sure, the building changes, and principals change, and the kids graduate, but it's the same building. I would take a hostage. And it would likely be an administrator. It's best for everyone that I do not like to stay in one place for too long. I like different choir rooms, different pianos. I like adjusting and bringing in my one box of personal items to display on the desk. I have colleagues who dug into their rooms, and started photo galleries of their choirs on the wall, and banners of every All State and Southwestern Conference with kids' names. I was in three of those rooms, and I kept up the tradition. But I never started one, and I never ended one.
I won't drag on here with every story. As one language arts teacher I worked with used to say "All in all, to sum up, in conclusion", it's been thirty years and six buildings. I survived marriage, raising two children, twelve principals (it's true, one building had a new principal every year for the five years I was there), six student suicides, four fatal student car accidents, five students with cancer, students whose parents were getting divorced, a number of non fatal car accidents, a school shooter, sibling deaths, musicals, concerts, state choirs, my own divorce and teaching choir online.
I did online very well. I taught the tonal qualities of water in a glass based on how full it was and the thickness of the glass. We made string instruments from yarn and dining room chairs. They sang their hearts out into Sound Trap, and I spent hours editing it into a choir.
And in August of 2021, I realized the kids I had been teaching online were the top 10% of my classes. Those who cared. The rest...did not. You can't run a choir program that has 150 students enrolled and only 15 that are committed to showing up, learning music, and performing. This is simply a fact. Because we were remote, I had been fooled. Once they arrived in class, live in person, late, in pajamas and addicted to their cell phones, I realized I had been duped. Sadly. I blame my age.
This year, which everyone keeps saying is "after" Covid (but that's ridiculous and all thinking people know it, we're still dealing with a pandemic) has been the hardest. THAT is true. The expectations on teachers have not relaxed, and our kids have been taught during remote learning that the expectations for them are so low for success, they really only have to wake up and show up. This year was harder than any of the previous 29 years. Period. It broke the back of the choir I was working with, even though I did everything I could to keep them interested online. I've never taught so much history or allowed days of karaoke; I created music lessons with glasses of water, and with found objects and spent hours mixing their individual recorded voices into a "choir". I believed that the kids were actually getting something out of this debacle. I thought we "made" it.
Then when they returned, they just couldn't get to class on time anymore. They were bringing blankets, wearing slippers and refusing to put away their phones. They talked incessantly and can't sit still for an entire class period. Our fall concert was disappointing, they waited until the day before to learn their choreography, and the entire tenor section was out sick the week before the concert, causing me unprecedented anxiety. The holiday concert will be only slightly better, as I have kids out sick every day, and for days on end, and they can't rehearse. I was going to feature the smaller groups more, but out sick is out sick, and you can't learn your harmonies from home on your chrome book. I have never been this exhausted, and frustrated, and angry.
For the first time in thirty years, I wake up in a great mood and by the time I walk in the building, I'm already mad.
So, after thirty years, it's time to go.
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