Adventures in Pedagogy

In 2003, having gone back to school and looking to finish my degree in English so that I could become a teaxher, I was hired on as an assistant in the Exceptional Children's Department in our local school system in a lateral entry position. I still remember where I was when the principal called me: the loading dock of our town hospital, where I was working as a cook. The principal told me that I would be working in a “pull-out” classroom, where students in the elementary school would arrive throughout the day to get help with reading, writing, and math. 

That August, the Friday before schools would open for teachers, I went to the director of food services and handed him a note of resignation. I was so excited. I had dreamed of becoming a teacher since my middle school days, and though I wavered early on, as all kids do, deciding what I truly wanted to do professionally, I nonetheless felt as though I was embarking on the first days of a thirty-year career in education. At twenty-six, I could be excused for being both naive and a little too enthusiastic, having no deeper experience with primary education than my own.

The first few months were thrilling. I was helping kids learn to read, and the teacher I worked with, if a little ‘country’, seemed to know her business, at least about getting kids up to speed with their reading. As Christmas rolled around, though, I started to see cracks in the idealistic view of my new career. Things seemed to be going well one day, and the next, everything was not okay.

Most professional jobs have a period of probation, usually sixty to ninety days, where a new employee can, if necessary, be terminated or at least set back on the right path if they have strayed. The place of work and everyone else are on a sort of probation with the new employee as well, when a new hire begins to see reality about their peers, and my eyes had certainly been opened. In those first few months, it was brought home to me just how woefully inept the teacher in my classroom really was. Not only that, but how devastatingly Sisyphean our work was. Every day, we helped kids learn to read, but it was never enough. They were perpetually behind, and no matter how often we got them up to their expected goals, their regular classrooms had already moved on. 

This was only one piece of a series of realizations that shook me. For the next three school years, I labored, like the students, under the delusion that things would get better. If I just kept at it, put my head down and dug in, I would eventually get beyond the breakers. It was not the case. 

Meanwhile, each semester I was also laboring to get my degree, only to find that going part-time was not nearly enough to complete the required hours anytime soon. The oasis of hope that fueled the dream of becoming a teacher was feeling more like a mirage. While we were raising our small family, I was working part-time at other jobs in the summer and evenings, taking classes part-time, and every day facing the unbelievable and unbearable personal and professional problems of my lead teacher. It was all starting to tell on me, I think.

In year four, the director of our department, a diminutive and domineering woman called Dr. Dinah, moved me to another classroom, much against the principal's protests. It was a sort of promotion for which I was grateful, but the job proved to be a step down into the intolerable. I was now well away from the marital and professional collapse of the other teacher, but I had been moved to self-contained functional skills classroom with children who had severe and profound disabilities. 

I didn't mind this at all. Many were nonverbal, most were very young and unable to do much at all except cry and scream when they were unhappy, but, most of the time they were sweet and wonderful. I immediately loved each one of them and worked hard to help them accomplish their goals. My problems were never the kids so much, but with the adults who made things so difficult. The lead teacher was a nice enough and capable person, but her team, of which I was the newest member, was savage and cutthroat at best. At worst, they were a daily nightmare.

Immediately, I was given the most challenging children, forced to take on “bodyguard” roles for other kids with behavioral issues because I was the only male on staff, put in scenarios where I was expected to do the impossible with very little backup, like escort 6 kids to lunch in the main cafeteria by myself, each one of them going in different directions. For four years, I was made use of in these and other humiliating ways, through three school buildings. It was during these second four years that I was assaulted three different times by three different students.

The last of these incidents was the one that set me over my tolerance, though. The child had severe intellectual delays, but her parent allowed her to scamper through the neighborhood in her birthday suit and sent her to school most days filthy and frothing. Part of each week, I was scheduled to work with this child, and little did I know she would be the forecaster of my future.

Lyca (not her name) needed her diaper changed about three times daily.  On the days that I supervised her, I was expected to be responsible for this duty. My predecessor in the position had been accused by a different parent of indecent liberties with their child several years before and had been summarily fired. Despite being exonerated later, this man's life was essentially ruined, and I was absolutely not going down the same path. 

I starkly refused the diaper changing on these grounds, which were well-known if unspoken in the classroom and the school. I was written up for not following directives, but the write-up was soon taken off my record when the school attorney was asked to review the disciplinary action, and they vindicated my assertion that, if there were female staff in the classroom, they were to do the diaper changes as needed. 

Dr. Dinah and the female teachers that I worked with and especially the head teacher of the class were angry at me for this, and it was made clear to me that I was only getting away with my “disobedience” because I was a male. One of my coworkers was a particularly unpleasant person, and she said this to my face one day. In one of the few times in which I was actually able to muster the courage to say what I was thinking in the moment without losing my temper, I responded, “If I were a woman, then this wouldn’t be a problem for me.”

Two weeks after this intense and exhausting battle, Lyca bit me on the hand while we were waiting for dismissal on a bright Friday in mid-May. I was told to go to the urgent care to be treated (she broke the skin). I got a tetanus shot, and had a raft of blood tests, heavy-duty antibiotics. The next week I was directed by the school to go back to the doctor for more blood tests to rule out that I didn’t have HIV/AIDS or any other bloodborne pathogens. This wasn't to verify that I was okay but to make sure Lyca wasn't infected by me. 

No one, not the principal (different from when I started) or her assistant, or any coworkers, asked me how I was or if my hand was okay. After the battle to not change diapers, I had lost the respect of my fellow educators. Meanwhile, I was physically exhausted, mentally drained, and burning out hard, what I got was more crap assignments.

When I reflect on my time in the school system time, now I feel something akin to bitterness. Admittedly, working as a representative of the county government at my public library has healed many of these feelings, but what never really healed was the sense in which I was merely a tool, to be dropped when no longer needed. For eight years I was called to deal with troubled students, or—again, because I was a male—to restrain children who were acting out and a danger to themselves or others. Students frequently ran out of the school doors and out into the surrounding neighborhoods always had me in pursuit, because my job was reduced to a glorified bkuncer for special needs kids. I worked with a fourth-grader who had such violent and vicious tendencies that on more than three occasions, had I not been there, one of his fellow students would have suffered damage to life or limb or worse. 

Every time I felt overwhelmed, under appreciated, exhausted, I would double down remembering my childhood dream to become a full-fledged English teacher. And yet, the more I tried to help, the more I cooperated, the more I put myself in harm's way to make things better for students and staff, the more I found that my stress levels were becoming uncontrollable. I was angry, resentful and felt bullied by an administration that had no concern for me at all. 

When the results of the bloodwork came back clean (as I knew they would), I received a curt email from the new director of the EC department, who made it clear that had the child been infected (even by the student’s bite), I would have been dismissed. In shock, I told Micki that once summer arrived, I would be looking for another job. Luckily, I found one and also, fortunately, I was hired. 

I made an appointment to speak with the principal in late June in 2011. She could barely take her eyes off of her computer when I went to speak with her. We spoke of this and that, but soon enough got down, as I have heard it said, to brass tacks. “So,” I said, signaling that the small talk was over. “Please don’t say that you’re resigning,” she said. If I remember correctly, I laughed right out loud. “That’s exactly why I’m here.” The womans’ face fell so fast that I was startled by the change. I didn’t know if she would cry, but it certainly seemed to upset her. “May I ask why?” “I’ve found employment with the county.” The rest is history. I wanted to say so much more, but to what avail? Me complaining to her wouldn’t have changed how badly I was treated.

But it wasn’t really history. To this day, I carry within me the stress and trauma of those eight, ever-worsening years, as if each year I went down to a new, deeper level of hell. I came away with a mantra response when people asked me why I left. I never had a problem with the kids, even the worst ones. It was the adults, and especially the administration that was intolerable. I have many good friends from those days and I’m grateful to say that will likely not change.

When Micki told me that she was resigning her position with a local nonprofit to start the process of becoming a middle school teacher, I had a relapse of sorts. All my stress came back in a rush of what was for me real PTSD. The thought of starting work again in the schools gave me actual nightmares that I was going back. I muddled through those feelings, perhaps not very well. 

She handled her experience much better than I did and while teaching, she also went back and got her master's in education. She graduated in December of 2024. I've rarely been more proud.

Our career paths in the school systems (our county has one system for our town and one for the county; she worked for the latter) were very different—she taught social studies and language arts. Even so, she experienced much the same systemic problems. That story is hers to tell, but I will say that, rather than changing my mind about the public education system’s raft of problems, her experiences reinforced my feelings of doubt and disappointment. Despite having her master's degree and previous experience, she never got paid anywhere near what she was owed. She spent an enormous amount of money on her students to help them with school supplies. In her three years, she experienced a clear view of how the public education system has failed not just students but our whole society. 

I’m pleased to say that, as of this writing, she is working in a different field, still in education, but not as a teacher or administrator, and she is, it is obvious, much happier. Again, that’s her story to tell. The only time I was ever happier for her, in terms of her career choices, was on the day that she came home from her last day of school, never to look back with the promise of a better job in front of her.

When I was a kid, I admired my teachers deeply. It is safe to say that they made an incredible difference in my life. One of my middle school teachers is someone I still have fairly regular contact with, thirty years later. I’m the man that I am partially because my teachers gave a damn about me. 

Micki gave more than a damn about her students and I know she made all the difference for some of them. Like me, she said it wasn’t ever the kids that were the problem. It was a structurally flawed administration from the superintendent to the school staff. The disease has traveled far, though. It now comes from the US Capitol and trickles down to the students in the schools near you. 

I have no solution to this, except to say that, as for me and my family, we won’t ever work in the school system again. There are other ways to participate and aid education. And, my heart goes out to those friends and former colleagues who, despite the horrors, continue to go back year after year and face the nightmare. There are good schools, good principals, and good teachers, but the system is failing now, and likely beyond hope.

I wrote this essay because, as a former educator, I’m one of the lucky ones. I got out while there was still time. No parents accused me of harming their children, thus ruining my reputation forever. I have scars. As I said, I’m not one to hold resentments, at least not since I got sober, but in the years since my nightmare ended, I’ve never been able to shake the bad feelings I have for the people who failed me and failed my family as a result. I wasn’t a perfect employee. No one ever is. I had a lot of growing and learning to do, but I was willing to do it. Instead, I got run through the meat grinder. As I put these final words down, I am witnessing a power structure in our local schools become a serious cult of personality rather than an organization for teaching kids. It is more of the same. I’m glad Micki got out when she did! My heart goes out to her friends and colleagues—and our family members—who stay every day and fight the good fight.