Come Monday

For those who don't know: I quit my job.

I've changed too much in the last few months to remain where I was much longer. I loved working there, but I couldn't go anywhere within the company. I will always be "just" a teacher; and while that's not a horrible thing, I need more both personally and professionally.

(I blogged about the job offer in Simply Sentenced, you can click here to read the details.)

I start this Monday. Tomorrow.

These last five weeks have been a roller coaster. Am I ready to leave? Should I leave? What will happen if I do leave? Et cetera. Et cetera.

Telling my students was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I waited until there were only two weeks left before I broke the news, and I thought I was going to cry each time I told each class. At first, those who knew me and my quirky sense of humor thought that I was kidding. After all, they reasoned that anyone who could tell the (admittedly stupid) "two students walked into a bar" joke could certainly pull their leg about leaving.

This past Wednesday brought more temptation to cry as I received a giant going away chocolate chip cookie with "We'll Miss You, Louch" written on it in delicious sugar icing. A perfect jump-start at eight in the morning! A few cards and a few small going away gifts were given to me as well, all of them surprising and wonderful.

How will I fit into this new culture at this new school? What role will I take on? Will I be called Louch as well? Or will I get the more formal Mrs. Louch? Will they "get" my jokes and my dry sense of humor? We shall see, won't we?

Part of me is scared witless, readers. Absolutely. In fact, I'm trying to figure out if I was suffering from temporary insanity when I decided to leave certainty behind.

The other part of me, of course, points out the obvious: remaining within the safe confines of certainty is what's insane. Staying in one place simply because I know what will happen tomorrow is everything that I don't want to be.

Staying is reasonable. Staying means that I have a steady paycheck, the knowledge that my friends are near, and students who invariably act in a certain, predictable manner.

I'm leaving -- I left -- because I have to see what I can do. At my previous job, despite my best efforts, I felt myself slipping back into complacency. I was being reasonable because it was easier and because I had students who were familiar with me and because I was teaching the tried and true.

Let's face it, when you have 12 weeks of lecture memorized... well, who wants to try something new? There's a certain, comfortable luxury that comes with knowing that you don't have to prep and that you can teach without notes.

But last week I threw away my lecture notes and deleted old activities. When I left on Wednesday, my file cabinets were empty-- save for a few items relevant to this term. I dropped my management text with its annotations and the three-inch, three-ring binder of detailed lecture notes on the desk of the office-mate that will probably end up having to teach it. My entire binder of English 201 materials was passed on to the teacher who's taking over my (former) noon class. Business Organization went to my former supervisor who's covering that class.

I didn't keep a thing that might help me remain complacent. Come Monday, I start from scratch.

What better time to be unreasonable?



(The full joke: Two students walked into a bar.... I bet it hurt!)

Gold Stars for Breathing

Toward the end of the previous term, the usual question came up at our morning staff meeting: what can we do to improve attendance?

And, as usual, I sat silently while my supervisor told us that we'd begin to have dialogues about individual classes and attendance in the coming weeks. Think about what you can do differently in the classroom to improve attendance, she encouraged us.

Sent on our way at the end of the meeting, I went to my classes and posed the question to my classes. As far as I can tell, in this case, the customer is one of the best sources for such answers. And so five out of five classes had the same discussion and, as usual, the same answers came up: teach us, do your job, we don't want the jerks to come back to class anyway.

Two students had a suggestion: offer homework passes like Ms. H-- does to to reward people for attendance.

I smiled and said I'd look into it.

Inwardly I rebelled, swallowing the urge to snap that I would not institute them, thank you very much. Why should I reward you for doing what you're paying to do in the first place? That's what I have trouble understanding: rewarding people for showing up.

If I fail to show up for work, I get fired. If they fail to do their work, they do not earn an "A." Period.

A second suggestion was to give participation points. Again, however, I find myself sitting here, dumbfounded, at the idea of giving people points for doing what they are supposed to do in the first place.

We are rewarding mediocrity when we do this. We are encouraging behavior that will ultimately come back to haunt them. While I will not suggest that just doing your job will get you canned, I will suggest that just doing your job will allow you to just do that particular job for the rest of your life.

If you have aspirations to go above and beyond the bottom of the employment food chain, you cannot "just do" your job.

I've yet to meet an employer who celebrated employees who did the barest minimum to get by -- so why do people think that this is acceptable in the classroom? (The classroom, you know, that place where we are supposed to prepare students for the real world.)

We are not preparing our students for reality when we pat them on the head and praise them for what should be a given. We are preparing them to be let down, to fail, to be exactly average. The worst part, however, is that very few of them will know why they have been let-down, why they will fail, and why being average isn't good enough.

After all, average was great in school.