Would You Put Up with This Shit?

I don’t think so….

You are an educated professional. You went to college, university, tech school, whatever. Maybe even got a master’s or PhD. You are well-paid in your profession, respected, given autonomy, support, maybe even empowered to do your job. You work long hours as needed, but you can accumulate vacation time. You can also make a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the day and leave work to go to it, and no one blinks. You can eat lunch when you are hungry. You can even go out to lunch if you choose. Oh! You can go to the bathroom when the need arises. And sure, sometimes your job is stressful. You may have late nights. You take your work seriously, and you feel good about the contributions you make to your workplace. You feel successful.

What if one day this happened:

You show up. You go to your office. You try to have a meeting, and you are interrupted every time you begin to talk. What if you need to pee and you can’t go because you can’t leave your coworkers unattended?

What if your boss decided to tell you how to do every little aspect of your job? Not just provide feedback, but tell you how to do it?

What if you were criticized by society about the outcomes of your work? Aspects of your work that you really can’t control?

I know people who work in professions where they would never put up with this shit.

Think about it—teachers have to get bachelor’s degrees, then get a teaching license. Many teachers get a master’s, and some even have PhDs. Teachers are highly educated. When I started in the field, we had to complete so many hours of student teaching in a classroom with a master teacher, receiving feedback and learning and growing.

And something happened. I was thinking this morning while I was getting ready to go be a substitute in the high school nearby: what if other professionals had to deal with what teachers deal with? What would happen? What would they tolerate? And I am wondering, why do we tolerate it? Why is this system allowing it? And why are we?

Several years ago, I wanted to start what I called the silent coup. The silent coup—teachers simply saying NO to anything that was not within their pay grade, their work hours, or their contract. And so what? you might ask…

I’ll tell you what:

Work—classwork, homework—most likely would rarely get graded. Therefore, kids would not get report cards.

Any lesson that got interrupted would end. Period. And everyone in the room would still be accountable.

Every time the teacher had to pee, they would call the office and ask for someone to cover their class. Principals would feel that one.

Lesson plans—maybe they would get done, maybe not. I mean, we do have a planning period. It would just depend on how many IEPs they had to attend during planning.

And so, the silent coup: teachers would only use the time they are paid for to do the work they are expected to do. The end. No more working outside the workday. And they would expect to be treated humanely—to go to the bathroom, eat lunch.

What if other professions had to put up with the stuff teachers do? What would they do? What would society do?

I challenge you…

Go to work tomorrow and don’t pee until 4:00 p.m. And don’t eat when you are hungry. And ask your boss to tell you how to do your job for a week. Take any work home that you didn’t finish and complete it at home. And if you have kids, even better.

I know many people do work hard and do these things, but it is not the expectation of the job. It is the choice of the worker. And sure, for teachers, it is a choice. I chose years ago to stop taking grading home. And that meant it took longer for kids to get feedback. And even though I didn’t do lesson plans at home, I still did them mentally—all the time.

There is this idea in our society that teachers are some sort of martyrs. And we have allowed it. And I wondered how this happened. How did education become this profession that asks so much of humans to teach other humans and spend their day with humans? How did it lose its humanity? And why are we micromanaged? Why are people in offices at the district and state level telling us how to do our jobs? It used to make me so mad when a new thing—a mandate, practice, some idea—became something we had to implement without question. And I am sitting here asking: why did we say OK? Why did we become compliant? Why did we allow this to happen?

I am no longer teaching. I am subbing. It is easy. It is sort of fun. I have time to sit here and write this little rant. And I have time to observe this system and watch as a sort of outsider on the inside.

So, I am here asking: would you put up with this shit? And if your answer is maybe not…then we have a big problem. Because teachers are the professionals in the field, and every single one deserves to be supported and respected as the authority in their field. And I don’t give a shit if you went to school, because we all did, but not all of us decided to continue to participate in it.

So, would?

I don’t think so