Let me set the scene.
The year: 2010
The season: A thick and sweltering Midwestern summer
I was on my way inside stately Haven Middle School in Evanston, Illinois to interview for my first teaching position. I wore black suit pants, a crisp white button down, and the doe-eyed naiveté of a twenty-five year old new to the education profession. I was ready to change the world, but first, I had to get through this interview.
Less than a week later, I was offered a position teaching sixth grade at my alma mater. The very middle school I attended. I couldn’t believe I was going back to this strange place of pre-teen angst. But I was ready. I was nervous yet jazzed for the new challenge. To start my career and attempt to make a name for myself.
I am a third generation Evanston teacher. My grandmother taught at Lincoln Elementary School and my mother at Orrington, Dewey, and finally Kingsley. Both of them were union presidents during their tenures. But I wasn’t so sure about all that union business. Some of the more seasoned teachers who touted the importance of the union, well, they seemed cranky and jaded. What did they have to offer me?
Boy was I in for a rude awakening.
The first few years of teaching were a crash course in public school politics. I learned quickly the value of the union and the importance of its protection.
Early in my career, before I was officially tenured, I was asked by some higher-ups in the district to perform a duty that contractually I wasn’t allowed to perform, due to being untenured. I liked my bosses and trusted them, so I agreed to engage with this task. Well, it backfired. Without going into too much detail, the superintendent at the time decided to come after me. My bosses, who I revered and trusted, could offer no protection. I was alone on an island.
Where did I go? Straight to my building mentor, who sent me to my union representative, an experienced and brilliant educator. I ran right to his room. We had never before spoken, and I was crying. I told him what happened. He was so kind. He said, calm down. We will fix this. You did nothing wrong. You don’t have to talk to them. We will handle this.
And so I learned the importance of the teacher’s union. And the importance of maintaining and honoring strong, seasoned staff in a school building.
Fast forward to current day. On Friday, April 29th at 10:45 pm, I received an email from our head of HR. Attached to the email was a form letter.
“The District is issuing you an involuntary transfer effective at the start of the 2022-2023 school year to ELA Teacher at Nichols Middle School.”
Involuntary transfer. The words sounded punitive and harsh to my trained ear. I reread that sentence four times.
“The transfer is due to a reduction in ELA Teachers at Haven Middle School caused by the closing of student sections.”
But this statement didn’t answer my real question, which was, why me? If this transfer is punitive, as it seems to be, if there was a problem with what I was doing, or in my behavior—I am a rational and receptive person. Just have a conversation with me. Can we talk, human being to human being? Let me know. Put me on notice.
Listen, selfishly I’m very excited for a fresh start, at a functioning school. Really excited! Where I don’t have to worry as much about student fights and administrative retribution. But the move still stings a little. I feel unwanted and unappreciated, blindsided and confused.
Upper administration this week has announced they’re removing a relatively large number of some of our most tenured and respected staff out of Haven. That they will be relocated across the district, some to grades and subjects they’ve never before taught. But why? Don’t tell me declining enrollment. There are newer, less experienced, less pivotal staff members you could have moved, which would have caused far less disruption to the school. When you’re new to a building, you don’t hold it up in the same way that seasoned employees do.
An experienced teacher does their job, but really, they do much more. They keep a building running. They are the backbone, a community touch point, a light. When you remove them, when you target experienced educators, you create purposeful instability and upheaval. You create a vortex. You are hoping that a school will fail. But why? How does this serve you?
A squeaky wheel gets the grease. I get that. At this point, I own my newfound identity as a squeaky wheel. And the grease, ie. the solution? Well, they’ll move me all around until I get tired of being treated like an object instead of human being. I guess they’ll call that a solution. But here is the thing, I will not stop calling out the problems I see in this district. I will speak my truth until I’m blue in the face. Until I’ve been switched around to every building they can think of and all the new ones yet to be built. Because I’m not going anywhere. I am here for the community, the PEOPLE, because I believe in them. I see the promise this place has to offer, however imperfect it might be.
I am staying, because I love Evanston. Because I love teaching. I want to be part of a real solution. Not one of the many bandaids this current administration and board continues to place on all of the very real and potent problems that have always been present in this community. I seek to interrupt these problems. I’m not okay with the status quo. I’m simply saying that I want to work collaboratively, with transparency and accountability.
Every day I seek to remember my professional purpose. To get back in touch with that sweet, hopeful twenty-five year old skipping up the steps to her interview. To remember what it felt like to be new and inspired and impassioned. Because what is the purpose of a teacher? They are here to teach children. To love. To give. To inspire. To lift up our youth. It is a noble profession.
But I don’t see any nobility in the way my fellow teachers have been treated this week. All I see is the wreckage. And who will be there in the end, when the dust has settled, left to pick up the pieces?