What's my Role? How Do I Fit?

10 May 2016

I am a professional educator. I am still young in the profession with merely four and a half years under my belt, yet still I am a professional. 

I spent six years after my public school education training for this role. Some would argue that I've been in preparation for this role even longer. Nevertheless, six years of my life have gone to studying this craft meticulously, trying to learn its nuanced ways. 

Four-and-a-half years later, I find myself questioning why I spent so much time in pursuit of this vocation. I am growing stagnant and frustrated. Nothing adds up. 

I am a professional educator, but I do not have a seat at the table when we discuss education. I am a trained, certified, highly-qualified educator, but there is not a space for my voice in this broken system. I am an educator who has been trusted with your children for thirty-six weeks, one hundred and eighty days, 1,080 hours, and roughly 64,800 minutes on the clock; however, I cannot be trusted to make curricular choices for your children. 

I am an educator whose job security is tied to student test scores and observations, but I cannot be trusted to determine methods and texts appropriate for preparing your children. Yet still, I am a professional educator trained to ensure your child is college and career ready. 

I am an educator in one of many broken systems. I work in a system that tells me what text I am supposed to teach, how quickly it needs to be taught, what questions I need to ask students about said text, what vocabulary words my students need, what essays should be written, and when they should write them. This system has never met your children that sit in my class each day. It does not know your child's story like I do. This system neglects the fact that our system has been broken for quite some time now, and my students do not all read on grade level (some classes don't even have a single child reading on grade level). 

This system has not checked the inventory in your child's school. It does not realize that due to order hiccups and lost books, I cannot issue every child a textbook because there simply are not enough books to go around. This broken system does not realize they want us to read a 384-page novel in three weeks when I only have thirty copies and seventy students are supposed to be reading it during that allotted three week period. We are told that we should not read the text in class with students because the work is not rigorous enough for students if we are simply reading. 

Yet, I am a professional educator trained to teach your child. I am an educator who cannot sleep at night because my ethical and moral integrity are begin chipped away daily. I was called to this work, I was designed for this work, but I have hit a wall. I do not know what purpose I serve or why I was trained. I do not know how to use my voice to serve my students and my profession well. My professional judgement has been stifled, and my hands are tied. 

There's this tension between the idea of submitting to authority and my silence supporting the oppressor. I do not know how to live in this tension anymore. I no longer know up from down, right from wrong. 

The one thing I do know is I am an educator trained to serve your students and despite the tension, I desperately still want the opportunity to do her justice. 

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God  will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act," said Bonhoeffer.