Teaching: Public vs. Private

An 1872 document I kept from a long-since-forgotten graduate course in education lists nine rules teachers should follow including:

"After ten hours in school, teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books."

"Every teacher should lay aside from each day pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining year so that he will not become a burden on society."

"Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty."

"The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents in his pay, providing that Board of Education approves."

Contrast those rules with the one that the chairman of the English Department gave me in the hall just as I was entering my very first high school class (American Lit): "Remember, the first rule of teaching is to make sure your fly is zipped."

(To this day, I do not enter a classroom or a faculty meeting without checking my fly.)

A couple of things interest me about these rules. The first is that none of them concern students. They are all focused on teacher behavior or the lack thereof. This doesn't surprise me, for despite the well-intentioned rhetoric of parents, administrators, and politicians - "It's all about the students" - when push comes to shove, it's rarely about the students; it's usually all about what's in the best interests of parents, administrators, and politicians.

The second and more obvious conclusion is that, even in independent schools, teaching is a public enterprise. Educators are constantly "on." There are times when we are on fire in front of a class and others when we are on trial, but we are continuously on stage and on display in front of students, parents, colleagues, administrators, and our communities.

I first grasped this when, much to my dismay, a girl in one of my classes recounted in precise detail every piece of clothing I had worn for the past week (especially embarrassing because during this particular week I had worn the same oxford shirt for three straight days, cleverly disguising it - or so I had thought - with two different ties and a sweater).

But although we practice our craft smack in the unyielding glare of the public eye, rarely does the public witness the years of course work, the days and weeks of preparation, the anonymous hours of solitary grading, and the numerous one-on-one conferences with individual students in which all educators engage as prerequisites for upholding the personal and professional ethics of our chosen vocation.

I'm not trying to elicit sympathy for how hard it is to be an educator (although it can be all-consuming) or making an argument that teachers deserve higher pay, better working conditions, or greater societal respect (although I believe we do); teachers are all adults (well, most of us are) and we have consciously chosen to do the work that we do.

The fact is that teachers like most professionals with public personas - athletes, artists, even politicians - have dedicated themselves to their vocation but most of their preparations for their public performances, their classes, take place in relative anonymity. And after teachers teach their classes, they tend to return to their relative anonymity, reading their Bibles, planning for their retirements, frequenting pool halls, or getting shaved in a barber shop.

It's impossible for anyone, even a teacher, to be "on" all the time. So if you see a teacher at church, at the bank, at Rookies, or at the barber shop and his (or her) fly is down, please let him know.

--Steve McKibben
8/31/07