Why Being a Good Teacher Just Isn't Good Enough--A Conversation Concerning Tenure Laws

Dear Friends,

During my very first year of teaching, I ventured into the girls' restroom rather than using the teacher's rest room. It was a random choice that almost resulted in the end of my teaching career. In the restroom was one of my students. She had tried to harm herself after an abusive act by a parent. (She showed me the physical scars on her back from a beating and shared her account of the abuse.) I carried her from the restroom (since passing period was approaching) and took her to the school's office. Since she had confided in me the abuse, it was my legal responsibility to report the event, and in doing so, began the battle. The parents denied the abuse, and openly attacked me for reporting it.

I am a good teacher. I am a better teacher today than I was in 1986 when this event occurred.

However, I would NOT be a teacher today had it not been for tenure laws that protected me during my first year of teaching, and that continued to protect me up until this year when they were removed.  

Even though I did everything correctly on that fateful day, had I not had due process in my corner, I would not have survived that event. It's really as simple as that. Being a good teacher is just not enough. Being a good teacher does not grant you a magic shield from that which you cannot see--uncontrollable events. Great teachers face battles daily, and without due process would lose their positions and leave the profession. However, the whole issue is not about protection; it's about the ability to do the job without the constant fear of being removed without justified cause, logic, and explained reason, for when you deal with children, children of all ages, there are issues that are beyond one's control at the heart of the job. That, my friends, is the CORE of this issue.

1) Why do teachers need tenure? No one else does.

First, there is a major misconception concerning tenure laws. Many people believe, incorrectly I might add, that having tenure protects teachers from being fired. Not so. So called "tenure" laws really guarantee a teacher "due process" or a series of steps that must first occur prior to termination. These steps, quite simply, require "just cause" to be presented prior to termination. In 1957, the Kansas Supreme Court adopted "due process" rights for teachers. Teachers were granted "due process" so that "fair dismissal" could occur. Due process was deemed significant...

“…to protect competent and worthy instructors and other members of the teaching profession against unjust dismissal of any kind – political, religious or personal…”
“…secure for them teaching conditions which will encourage their growth in the full practice of their profession…”
“…it does not confer special privileges or immunities upon them to retain permanently their positions…”
“…empowers Boards of Education to discharge them for just cause in an orderly manner by the procedures specified.” From http://www.knea.org/assets/document/dueprocess.pdf

Teaching is mental, social, and personal triage each and every day. Teachers are on the front lines dealing with issues they cannot choose, predict, or often fully control. Without due process, they cannot do their jobs. Without due process, a teacher is confined to work within a safe box where true "growth in the full practice of their profession" does not occur. We as teaching "diagnosticians" work with passion, love, and devotion; however, the unknown factors in our work require us to have in place a process that grants reasons for termination. Our jobs not only involve risk, but our worth is often measured by standardized tests that do not take into account those uncontrollable factors. The autistic student who you guided to finding their first successful socialization within your classroom environment is deemed your failure when he/she doesn't exceed proficiency on a standardized test. The student who has shown incredible growth this year also was affected by her parent's divorce the week the tests were given.  Her performance is also the fault of the teacher.  Great teachers face uncontrollable factors and are evaluated in highly subjective manners. Due process gives teachers the right to validate their work and demonstrate methods that would otherwise go unseen. A wonderful student from my past sent me a great article that validates this process in a this metaphor:

"Teaching is like painting a huge Victorian mansion. And you don't actually have enough paint. And when you get to some sections of the house it turns out the wood is a little rotten or not ready for the paint. And about every hour some supervisor comes around and asks you to get down off the ladder and explain why you aren't making faster progress. And some days the weather is terrible. So it takes all your art and skill and experience to do a job where the house still ends up looking good."---"The Hard Part" by Peter Greene http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-greene/the-hardest-part-teaching_b_5554448.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063


I'm a Kansas farm girl, so my metaphor is tied to my roots. A good farmer prepares for his harvest by using his knowledge of soil and seed to grow a bumper crop.  He labors with passion to make it so.  He works from dawn until dusk using his full experience to produce the best crop he can grow.  However, he does not always see the storm clouds until they are upon him.  Should weather conditions outside of his control bring hail or drought damaging or destroying his work, we should not say, "If you had only been a better farmer, you would have had a great crop."

To a teacher, due process is the crop insurance for our most important harvet: our students.

2) Tenure Laws Protect Bad Teachers

I consider this the elephant in the room any time I raise this issue. "If you're a good teacher, you don't need tenure." Being a good teacher takes time to develop. It is a guided practice where experience is built through work, education, and well-planned professional development. Saying "being good" is enough of a professional bar of protection is sheer ignorance, and I will admit that I have even heard fellow colleagues say this. The variable issue remains the core issue. First, we deal with a deep and varied culture of children. We work with students of poverty, abuse, mental illness, loss, apathy, and more. It is daily triage work, and it brings with it risk. We, as teachers, must have the ability to deal with that daily triage in the most professional manner we can without constantly fearing personal retribution. Emotions can run high in parenting, coaching, teaching, and counseling. If you haven't had to bite your own tongue because you wished for a different course of action for your child, well, bless you, for even I have, and we, dear friends, are the logical folks who work as a team with our children's guidance village. Keep in mind that every day there are those who are not so reasonable. The act of working within the confines of these conditions demands due process. By removing due process from Kansas teachers, we are not granting school districts the power to easily dispose of "bad teachers" who are weighing down the system. Those powers were already in place. Instead, we are confining good teachers to a box since the risk of stepping out is too great.

3) Removing Tenure Laws Will Only Strengthen the Profession

Since we can fire bad teachers, the profession can only get better, right?
Good teachers are not born, they are grown. Years of experience and guided practice creates the evolutionary growth of a great teacher. Removal of tenure laws not only restricts the professional growth of our current teachers, it chases away our future teachers as well. A friend of mine in charge of the teacher education program in a major Kansas college told me how four of her best and brightest teaching candidates entered her office the day after the Kansas legislature clipped the tenure law to the school funding bill and bullied it through after hours. These four candidates withdrew their names from the program. No future teachers were drafted that day.

And those numbers will continue to decline. I teach the brightest and best each day.  I love them, but they don't want to teach.  They see it, too.

Meanwhile, good teachers are evaluating their positions and deciding if the risk is survivable. When we leave the profession, we leave silently. We slink away in guilt, for we know the importance of the job; we just can no longer manage the daily triage and risk. While others might claim this purging of the profession will generate growth, I would note that after almost thirty years in the profession, I feel we are at the crisis point.  Fewer candidates enter the profession and more are flooding out.  I would challenge you to speak to any administrator you know.  Ask them about how "easy" it is to find teaching candidates to fill their empty positions.  You might then understand the price of this quiet decline.  A teacher friend of mine who recently  left the profession said, "I just didn't have the energy left to fight.  I just couldn't fight any more."

My first year of teaching was trial by fire.  I remember going home that day after helping a scared, hurt young woman, removing my white shirt that was covered in blood, and throwing it away.  I sat and cried most of the evening.  It was an frightening and emotional event, and I can still remember it clearly today. (The young woman I mention later received treatment and fully recovered much to my great happiness.)  I managed to survive that event and face many more days of emotional triage within the education profession, but I did so with a due process safety net.  If that event had occurred today, where would I be?  I am not sure, but I can assure you that without that safety net many of our most talented minds will not venture to find out.

I am a good teacher.  I am always growing and reaching to become a better teacher, but that is just not enough.  It will not protect me from the risks of my profession.  So before my professional voice becomes a whisper, I will shout my message from the roof: Support teachers. Support our ability to grow and change and flounder and improve.  Support us. The education of all children is the cost of not doing so.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How Hard Could It Be Anyway? (And Other Observations About Teaching)

My Five Big "Ah-Ha" Revelations After 30 Years in Teaching