Maybe. Maybe not.

I probably won't be a teacher next month. I'm not a teacher right now, I'm just getting paid by a school, but that ends this month. I moved, so I'm looking for a new job. I broke my leg during prime teacher-looking-for-a-job season, which really hurt my confidence more than my chances, so I waited until the summer and now . . . nothing. Teaching jobs are hard to come by here in deep, white suburbia.

But I don't think I want to be a teacher next month. Later, maybe. I've had eight interviews in the last three weeks, and none of them have been for teaching gigs. Well, one tomorrow, but hopefully I'll cancel. I was kind of offered a job this morning. I was told by the owner of the web site that it would be great to have me on board, they just need to fill out some paperwork and find me a chair (literally). Does that count as an offer? We didn't talk money, so I say it doesn't. If I get an offer with a number attached tomorrow, before my school interview, I'll take it, and cancel with the school, and then I won't be a teacher.

At every interview, I've been asked why I'm not going to be a teacher. It's a really tough question to answer, because it was a heart-wrenching decision, and I don't use heart metaphorically lightly. I do feel a physical reaction in my torso when I realize I won't be teaching. I tell people it's because I was an editor and writer before I was a teacher, and I just want to get back into my original racket. That's because it would sound terrible at an interview if I told the truth. Teaching is a horrible job.

I met a guy at a party who is a pharmaceutical engineer. He designed a tank into which hamster enzymes are thrown, and, somehow, out comes propecia, the hair medecine. I asked if he liked his job. He said it had great hours, great pay, smart colleagues, interesting work. The only problem, he said, was that it was completely unfulfilling.

"How's your job?" he asked me.

"My job is only fulfilling."

There is nothing else good about it. The pay is lousy, the hours are endless, the colleagues are smart, but under so much pressure, and sometimes so young and inexperienced that they don't understand professionalism yet. The work is challenging, but it stops just shy of what I would call interesting. It is a horrible job. It is a miserable job. I have never met a person thinking about becoming a teacher whom I didn't try to talk out of the profession.

But it's a profession that needs me. It needs anyone, i'm not being egotistical. That's why it breaks my heart to leave it. It's like leaving a stray at the pound. I say to myself, someone else will come along and take care of that mangy thing, but I know I could do a good job at nurturing it, and someone else could take another mangy teaching job home with them.

So, I guess the moral is: Don't be a teacher. And if you want to be a teacher, whatever you do, don't ask me for career advice.

Comments

[Mike]

Wow Philip... What you wrote really reflects a lot of the feelings and thoughts that I was having (but was having a difficult time articulating) when I was debating whether to return to Banneker. Particularly interesting because I taught part-time in NYC Public Schools for a while during undergrad and decided not to continue for many of the same reasons. I guess time faded some of those memories because after working full-time and having the summer to reflect on the year, I had many of the same feelings and thoughts from my part-time experience several years before.