Working at a small independent school has been my life's work. I am not a perfect teacher or coach, but I care deeply - very deeply - about my student's growth.
Increasingly, though, it has become apparent that I no longer work for a small, community-based institution where we all labor, laugh and struggle together.
I work for a corporation.
This makes believe in the mission of the school so much harder when I am not longer treated as a respected teacher with the independence to act on my own expertise and experience. As if things couldn't get any worse, yesterday we had a consultant firm come in and tell us that we will be instituting a radical new schedule next year. As he himself admitted, this will be very disruptive and we will struggle for at least one year, more likely two, to adapt to this new schedule.
The time we have with our students is precious and all most of us really want is the tools to teach them as well as we can. The Covid year of 2020-21 was so hard not simply because it was hard, but because we couldn't teach well. We knew we weren't teaching well, and it was soul crushing. Now, we are going to voluntarily teach poorly for a year or two to institute a new schedule that the consultant firm basically implements wherever they go. There really is no solid evidence that it's better, but they get paid to "disrupt" the "paradigm."
My wife and I are a few years from being able to retire. I would have liked to make it to 30 years here, but if I had the money, I would retire now. To paraphrase a political expression: I didn't leave the school, the school left me.
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