One Down & Maybe One More

My high school is losing an awesome math teacher (I’ll call her Math Genius), and she’ll officially announce her move on Monday. Math Genius is leaving the high school mainly for the unfortunately all-too-often-cited reason of lack of administrative support. She also cited difficulties in getting her department to jump on board with the new mandated math curriculum, which again revolves right back to administrative support.

Basically three people in her department of 15 do almost all of the grunt work. Math Genius is fed up with the attitudes of her department and the inability of the administration to improve the situation or to enforce professional respect into her department. One teacher sent Math Genius his students because he “didn’t have time” to write them recommendation letters. Another teacher–even though they have a shortage of rooms–refused to share a room, another refused to leave the classroom while another taught in the room, and another refused to make space in the room for the traveling teacher. This is typical of the department, and no assistance comes from the front office. No real support exists.

Math Genius gets to school at 6 am and leaves at 6 pm daily because she sets up office hours for her students to get help before and after school. I would have to say she is one of the most effective, energetic, helpful, and caring teachers I’ve ever met. She will be a major loss, and we will feel this one for a while. Another teacher in her department applied for the same job that Math Genius received. The third leader in the department is a retire-rehire and loses the position if another qualified applicant applies, so more losses could be on the way. All this and it’s the department struggling the most to meet academic standards set by the state.

The other loss could be in my department where a young teacher of promise may leave partly because of the administration. While he (let’s call him Promising) has also wanted to live in this other town down the road, he was pretty set to stay with us until our administration began trying to force him out of the literature classes to teach transitional classes (for students out of ELL but not yet ready for Freshman English). Promising told the admin. team that he was hired to teach mainstream literature courses and was under the impression he would teach the mainstream curriculum, and he does not want to switch.

The unspoken reason the administrators want him to teach these classes is that he is Hispanic. Promising told them that only one Hispanic teacher in our building teaches a class other than a low level one, and he wants to show students they can achieve as he has. Plus, he does not feel qualified for these transitional classes.

Promising’s most interesting reason for not wanting to be placed in classes primarily stocked with Hispanic students is that he says he does not fit in with the local Hispanic population; they see him as “White.” He does not speak with the same dialect or slang, does not dress as they do, and he does not relate to the Hispanic students as well. This goes against the very reason the administrators want him to teach these classes.

All this comes after two questionable hires, and the questions remain: when will our administrative team figure out how to be proactive and effective? When will they value our experienced assets and help us to nurture our new teachers? My colleague says the real question is: when will the district office make some changes in the front office?

I’m not sure but maybe all of these questions are the right ones; regardless, I’m tiring of losing good people and scaring away others.