The myth of the magical teacher: or, why I am putting in LESS effort today

I don't do it often, but I complained about a kid on Facebook today. I got a lot of sympathy for me, and one very sympathetic response to the kid. This friend suggested that he probably had a lot of disadvantages (true) and could benefit from a home visit (perhaps) and that I could (I'm sure she meant this jokingly) take him in.

Sigh.

I thought of the movie Freedom Writers, which I watched with my students for the first time last year. The teacher in it goes to great lengths to help a group of troubled kids at a troubled school. She gets a second job to afford books, and then a third job to afford field trips. She calls in favors. Her marriage breaks up. She goes to their houses, finds them on the streets, etc. It was moving. When we finished watching, the kids asked, "Is she still a teacher?" I told them I'd look it up, but in my heart, I already knew the answer: no. You can't put that much effort in and continue to do the job for thirty years. I was right: she taught for exactly four years.

Jaime Escalante, hero of the movie Stand and Deliver, taught for longer, about 18 years, although perhaps not as heroically as in the movie. Friends who had his class at Hiram Johnson all said he was nothing special -- in fact, they used to sneak out after attendance, and he apparently never noticed.

Mr. Holland's Opus depicts the good he did for his students at the expense of his relationship with his family.

Every once in a while, someone shares a meme about how much teachers actually work.

This is the one I saw most recently. And I think it's kind of ridiculous. Like, do most teachers really spend 4 weeks (20 8-hour days) on campus in the summer before school starts? Because I sure as hell don't. I mean, I might spend several hours here and there lesson-planning, communicating with colleagues, making copies, refining my syllabus, organizing my room, etc., but like... maybe 4-5 hours at a stretch, you know? Not full-time. Do I go to trainings? Yeah, but for 3-4 days. And the rest of the time, I'm taking my kid to the zoo. 

And 3-5 hours every night of meetings, phone calls, grading, planning, etc.? Uh... no. More like 40 minutes of it at school, then at most, an hour at home. There are variations on a theme -- if I have a lot of essays, I might spend 90 minutes at home on them for a whole week straight. Then the next week, I might not do a damned thing but read the book I've assigned my kids. 

Now some of my extra work comes in other places -- I work through lunch a lot of the time, for example. 

Maybe the above graphic is true for some teachers, though. I sure as hell hope they're single, or childless or empty-nesters or something. Because I have a LIFE. Twelve to fourteen hours a day, as this chart suggests, is INSANE. That would mean going to work at 7:30 and stopping working at 7:30 pm to, I don't know, eat? Do these crazy fuckers eat? Do they sleep? Do they go to the gym? When do they shop for groceries? How do they keep up with the Kardashians? 

You may already know that 40-50% of new teachers don't make it to 5 years. 15.7 percent of teachers quit every year, and 40% who pursue teaching degrees never enter the classroom.* There are almost 3 million results on Google for "teacher burnout." 

What would happen if I gave this job my all? My 110%? What would happen to my home, my kid, my marriage? Could I save these students? Could I drag them out of poverty and illiteracy and abusive homes and drug- and gang- infested neighborhoods and show them the light and change their whole lives? 

Right now, I do my best to teach the kids how to write well, how to communicate, how to understand what they read, how to be persuasive, how to recognize bias, how to tell what sources are worth using, how to synthesize information and respond to different points of view. All the English stuff. And then at the end of the year, when my seniors are heading off into the world, I sneak in some lessons that aren't in my purview. I teach them about payday loans and interest rates, and I teach them about pyramid schemes and why not to work for Cutco or Herbalife, and I teach them about consent and the variety of people they'll run into in the world, and I teach them what to do if they get pulled over when driving, and I tell them what jury duty is like, and I encourage them to join all the clubs and take advantage of the movies and the lectures, and I teach them how to dress for an interview, how to shake hands, how to maintain eye contact, and to turn their phones off before they even get in the lobby. 

I think I could sacrifice my personal happiness, my family life, and my sanity, and perhaps I could be a savior for a certain number of students. Let's go with a high number of 25 per year.  I could probably swing that for as much as five years before needing to quit and do something easier. That's 125 students. Or I could help all my kids, about 115 per year, learn how to get jobs and not sell Herbalife. And I can do that for about three decades. That's 3500 students at no personal cost to me. 

When I weigh those options with the greater good in mind, I always end up with me teaching for 30 years. Maybe I'm nobody's savior. Maybe I'm nobody's miracle cure. But I'm a good teacher, I'm a good mom, and I'm a good wife. And I'm on track to be at this for a couple thousand students longer. 

So no, I'm not taking this kid in. I'm going to do exactly what I've been doing: trying to show him how to take personal responsibility. Giving him make-up work when he gets himself suspended. Working gently with his emotional issues so that he knows he's safe with me and welcome in my classroom. Smiling and saying hi in the hall even when he's been an absolute butthead earlier in the day. Correcting his work so that he's doing his personal best, but not setting the bar so high that he's frustrated and gives up. Teaching him how to read, write, communicate. And hopefully keeping him out of the Herbalife business. And out of jail. 

Today, I'm not making phone calls. I'm not answering emails. I have to do some grading later, after Z goes to bed, but right now, I'm playing Monster High with her, and I'm having fun doing it. Except for that this wig is so itchy! (We get very into character.)

*http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/why-do-teachers-quit/280699/  

Science is real… and I just got my flu shot!

I don't know why I bother. I saw this image on a friend's Facebook page the other day, and I decided to answer the question. And then I got involved.

The answer, of course, is that I'm not concerned about MY vaccinated kid. I'm concerned about the immune-compromised, the very young, and those who can't be vaccinated. I'm sort of concerned for your kids, even though that's more your business than mine. I mean, if you want to get pertussis, go nuts, but I am a little sad if your argument is "people used to get whooping cough all the time -- it's not that bad!" 

And of course, vaccines aren't 100% effective*. Duh. I mean, sometimes you get the flu shot and then get the flu. But huge amounts of research show that you get it less often and less severely. Now go read this. What it says is that in countries with high rates of vaccinations, they have low rates of pertussis. If bunches of people get vaccinations, fewer people get pertussis. And it's not that bad… for you. But for kids under 6 months old, it can be deadly. 

The thing is, so many of the people who advocate for not vaccinating take this "educate yourself!" approach. And I actually have, and continue to. The overwhelming evidence is that although there are some rare cases of negative side effects of vaccines, and although vaccines aren't 100% effective, they have helped to wipe out many diseases, some of them fatal. I mean, if you're my age or older, you probably met some people living with the after-effects of polio. We don't have that anymore. 

I know I'm probably somewhat more of a critical thinker than many, but I'm not exceptional by any means, and it just drives me nuts the way people torture logic. 

The cartoon above, for example, is kind of a straw man fallacy. It attacks an argument you're not making.

The one I hear about keeping kids healthy through healthy diets is called a false choice: it makes it seem like you either get your kids vaccinated, then hook up the chicken-nugget feeding tube, or make them slow-cooked gluten-free broth and ensure their continued health that way. You can do both. Nothing wrong with increasing their immune response via a healthy lifestyle. 

I also see this all the time: "Well, I got the flu shot, and I got sick anyway!" or "My nephew got vaccinated, and then he was diagnosed with autism!" This is called anecdotal evidence. And it's usually crappy. But I feel like we mostly, as a society, recognize that it's crappy ("They say smoking is bad, but my grandpa smoked a pack a day until he was hit by a bus when he was 95.") But not the people making these arguments. Someone in the argument I managed to get myself into said,  "I didn't realize personal experience wasn't valid according to your statistics." But it isn't. Frankly, my personal experience is that I always get the flu shot and hardly ever get sick. But you wouldn't take that as gospel either, because it's not science… it's just this thing that I said.

And the following argument I'm going to make in favor of science doesn't invalidate the fact that I'm a skeptic, but there are certain things that satisfy my skepticism.

So… I am NOT a scientist. I'm not even that good at science. And I understand and recognize that about myself. What I do know is that science tends to use large samples, tends to control for variables, tends to test and experiment and re-test to get the same results. And when someone is pretty sure their science is legit, they write a paper in which they describe their methods so that other people can examine or re-create them, and then several other science people have to read it and agree that it's legit before it gets published. And even then, lots of other scientists are anxious to publish, so they try to tear it apart or address things that that study didn't address, or take a different spin on it, until there are hella pieces of research out there to read.**

So when you go read that research, and the VAST (like, about eleventy-billion to one) majority of those articles say "Yeah, vaccines are helpful," then my skepticism is alleviated somewhat.

But one has to be thorough, right? So I went looking for the other point of view. I searched. I followed footnotes and links and made a number of slightly-differently-worded searches, and what I found was one or two studies that said, "Well, it's possible that vaccines might cause this bad effect. We can't exactly rule it out. But since they are so overwhelmingly positive, our overall view is that you should probably still get them."

But the anti-vaccine people will argue with you all day. They have a gut feeling. They harken back to our ancestors. They think the decline in disease is due to better sanitation, not vaccines. And they have web sites! Their web sites are, by and large, selling something, but no matter. They have a feeling. They have thoroughly researched both sides (they are just unable, at the moment, to show you the research that supports them). And they made a choice.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson said, "the good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." So I still can't figure out how reasonable people can look at mountains of evidence in favor of vaccines and a few woo-woo paranoiac sites with no evidence and feel as though they've considered both sides and come to the decision that's right for them.

My guess is, either they didn't really look at both sides -- they've simply allowed a few cult-of-personality types to tell them what to believe -- or they're not actually reasonable people. Or maybe both.

Because longitudinal studies that include hundreds of thousands of people and "this one time at band camp" stories are just not equivalent.

Now let me finish by saying that this isn't an argument in favor of mandatory vaccinations. I still think you can make your choice -- it's just a bad choice, based on bad evidence. And if you believe that woo is the same as science, then I've got news for you. 


*Neither is birth control, but many of us have used it to great effect.
** A great example of this process is the infamous Wakefield study linking vaccines to autism. It was published, but then a WHOLE bunch of other scientists rebutted it, and then the researchers who worked with him wanted their names removed from it, and ultimately he lost his medical license over it. Of course, that was the ONLY study that showed a link between vaccines and autism, and yet 18% of the population believes there's a definite link, and 30% more just aren't sure.