Three Misconceptions About Academy Teachers

“Doesn’t That Job Grind People Up?”

A college friend I saw over the Lunar New Year holiday asked me, “You’re still at the academy? Doesn’t that job grind people up?” I laughed, but I know where the question comes from. Until I joined Epic Prep last year, I half believed it myself. Let me say this up front: I cannot claim the work is easy. On days when I teach the same passage three times, my voice cracks by the third class. That fatigue is real. But after a year here, I have learned that fatigue and depletion are two different problems. I can now pick apart the three misconceptions tangled up in my friend’s question.

Misconception 1: Academy Teachers Have No Career

It is true that there is no salary schedule like a public school’s, no promotion ladder drawn out in advance. But if a career means an accumulation of judgment, the story changes. Of course, it does not accumulate on its own. To make a proposal in a meeting, you need the unglamorous habit of writing down what the kids say, and nobody does that work for you. At this year’s spring curriculum meeting, I proposed replacing two passages in one of our reading levels. My evidence was the kids’ own words. All through last winter, on the same page, the same question kept coming back: “Teacher, who actually talks like this anymore?” I read that as a signal that the passage had gone stale.

The proposal was adopted, and in the first week of teaching with the new passage, one kid said, “This book is actually kind of readable.” From a sixth grader, that is the highest praise there is. A teacher gets a seat in curriculum decisions, sees the results of those decisions play out in the classroom, and revises them again the next term. The judgment that builds up while that loop keeps turning is what I have decided to call a career.

Misconception 2: It Is Just the Same Class on Repeat

We have a culture here of sitting in on each other’s classes. Last month Rachel, our campus director, sat in the back of my Tuesday class, and afterward we spent thirty minutes trading feedback. What I heard that day was, “You can’t even wait three seconds after asking a question.” It felt unfair, so I went back and listened to the recording of my class, and sure enough, I was not waiting. Since that day, whenever I ask a question, I count to five in my head. The number of times the kids speak up first has gone up noticeably.

I have failures too. Early this year I walked in with a brand-new discussion format, and within ten minutes the room went silent. One kid raised a hand and said, “Teacher, I don’t know what you’re asking us to do.” I shelved that format the same day. The next week I went to observe Jamie’s class and stole, outright, the trick of breaking instructions into three short lines on the board.

Yes, I repeat the same passages. But reading the very same scene, the 2:30 kid says, “The main character is so frustrating,” and the 5:30 kid says, “Honestly, I think I would have done the same thing.” The class may repeat, but the conversation never does.

Misconception 3: An Educational Philosophy Is a Luxury

Philosophy is a big word, but the places where it gets used are small. When a kid folds an essay in half, holds it out, and says, “I’ve just never been good at writing,” what you say right there on the spot is a matter of philosophy. That day I answered, “In this class, ‘never’ is a banned word,” and at the end of the term that kid turned in two full pages.

Of course there are days when philosophy gets pushed aside by the pacing schedule and the deadlines. Even so, I find it hard to agree that it is a luxury. One agenda item at last month’s teachers’ meeting was how many retakes to allow on vocabulary quizzes. It looks like an operations question, but it is really a question of how you see a kid, which is why the meeting ran past the hour before settling on “up to two retakes, with a narrower scope on the second.”

Days That Drain and Days That Build

If I could answer my friend again, I would say this: “There are definitely days that drain me. But the classes I teach and the words I hear pile up somewhere. What separates depletion from accumulation is not the word ‘academy’ on the sign out front. It is whether that pile is there at all.” Last week a kid stopped halfway through packing a bag and asked, “Teacher, you’ll be here next year too, right?” I said, “Yes, I will. Why?” and the kid said, “No reason,” and left. I thought about that “no reason” the whole way home.