A year off to think (part the second)

So in the summer of 2003, I packed up my teaching stuff for the first time and left for a 2 1/2 week solo trip to Europe (that's a whole post of its own).   When I returned, we had about two weeks to pack up our two separate apartments and haul it across the country.  We were in a bit of a hurry because we still had not heard if our teaching licenses had transferred so we had no jobs.

A very long story short, we were both unemployed until November when I found a full time job teaching elementary general music grade 3-5.  I spent most of that year surviving on lesson plans and games I acquired during student teaching (thank God for Eileen Treusch....), and learning about the still very much segregated city of Chicago.  In December, Tyson was found by a "headhunter" (recruiter) for Chicago Public Schools.  The recruiter (a balding Italian man who interviewed us at a restaurant in Cicero over a plate of lasagna....you can't make this stuff up....) guaranteed Tyson a job as a regular band teacher after he worked that year as a building sub, a position we had never heard of---basically, so many teachers call in sick every day, that the individual buildings actually have to employ full time subs to cover classes.   He recommended me for a full time choir job at a high school, which I started that following September.  My third job in as many years.  I had four beginning choirs of anywhere from 35-45 students, and one class of mostly seniors for Music history/appreciation of about 40, where I was able to develop a decent high-school curriculum and keep my philosophy intact.

What we learned in those two years out in Chicago was this:

1) A majority of primary schools in CPS are K-8, and whether they have music is hit and miss.  There are no ensembles for grades 6-8, generally.  This only applies to neighborhood schools, though, not the magnet or charter schools.

2) Because of the inconsistency of music instruction at the primary level, students do not start ensembles until high school.  Beginning band with 9th grade gang bangers.  Wrap your head around that....

3) Principals have absolute power, private industry style, over their teaching staff.  On the surface, this sounds like a libertarian dream come true.  But what actually happens is this:  If you don't do as you are told, you will find yourself "laid off" regardless of years of experience, effectiveness with the students, accomplishments or progress made. You get "volunteered" for extra duty and not paid for it.  You get suspended without pay for an accusation---even when there are multiple witnesses that contradict the accusation.  You can have all of your fundraising money wiped out because the principal needed it for some other activity. 

4) If the superintendent (Chief Educational Officer, or CEO) doesn't even know all the principals by name, you as a teacher are a nameless statistic and number, as are the kids.  Everything and everyone depends, lives and dies by the paperwork.  Phone logs, lesson plans, discipline, memos, reminders paper paper paper paper paper paper everything (because if you're lucky you have ONE computer per subject department, and if you're REALLY lucky it's hooked up to the internet.  Our music department had one phone to share between the four of us, and it was in my office.  Tyson's entire floor had no phone, they had to go downstairs to the math office). You are a cog in a machine.  Period.

5) To survive in this environment (forget actually being effective), you have to avoid the teachers who have burned out and have nowhere else to go.  You have to mentally shut the kids out at the end of the duty day, because there is so much need you could never hope to come close to meeting it.   Or you have to pick and choose which kids to help, like triage in an emergency room.  Pick and choose based on who you think might make it.

In the end, we decided that if we continued to teach in CPS, we would both quit teaching within a few years, so we both started applying for jobs in the suburbs, around Seattle, and around Portland.  By August (the end of Tyson's second summer at Northwestern, and the end of my first) I had secured a job at a brand new middle school in Longview, WA, and we packed up our things into a moving truck and came home to the Pacific Northwest.

A year off to think. (part 1)

So Tyson has been concerned about my career.  More specifically, he's worried about me following his career around.  So I started reflecting on what I have done in the past ten years, including student teaching...what do I like best, what do I think I do best and and would like to pursue....and so far the conclusion that I've come to is that I'm glad I have this next year off to think about it.

My student teaching started with a part-time internship at Whitman Middle School with a fantastic orchestra teacher named Megan Cleary.  She was, at the time, teaching 6th grade choir, 6th and 7/8 orchestra, then traveling to Ingraham High School for orchestra and mariachi (an after school group).  That spring with her students, I attempted to play cello with the kids, learned how to tune violins REALLY FAST, and got my first exposure to non-traditional curriculum.  During that experience, she said to me "you should do your student teaching with Rich Sumstad over at Nathan Hale.  He does band and choir, and you would probably get along really well."  So the following September, I talked to the guy in the school of education who did all the music teacher placements.   What I found out much much later was this: Rich had worked with a string of student teachers, one every year for the past few years, and he had promised his students he wouldn't have any more for a while.  But my placement person was Rich's high school band director.  So he interviewed me anyway, and let the kids vote on it.  Thankfully, the previous year, they'd had a good experience with the student teacher (who I am now married to...) so between that and Rich's recommendation, the students voted to give me a chance.  (side note: Thanks Tyson, for NOT sucking! Love you!)

Rich had turned a rough high school program (15 kids in band, 15 kids in choir, three piano classes) into one of the most respected schools in the city.  When I was there, he had an award winning vocal jazz group, a concert choir (60 kids) and band (75 kids), two jazz bands, an orchestra (taught by Megan) and an all-auditioned, brand new women's choir of 15, which I directed that spring as a contracted employee of the parent's group.  But what he really emphasized with me (and with Tyson, too, I found out later) was the piano lab.  "We say music is important for all students, but never offer anything besides ensembles.  This is the class that I protect as much as my most select ensemble, because this is the class where we reach the rest of the student body." 

If that philosophy familiar to you Northwestern folks, here's the reason why: Rich's mentor was Steve Morrison at the University of Washington.  Dr. Morrison was one of Bennett Reimer's students.  =)

This student teaching experience shaped my philosophy going into my first job, and was reinforced every place I went after.  And then, of course, it was cemented when I went to Northwestern, and has become my philosophical "hill to die on" in the current educational environment (more on that later).

First job was Ingraham High School. Twenty-two years old, teaching high schoolers.  I would have visitors to the classroom, and watch their confused faces as they tried to figure out which person in the room was the teacher.  I was stopped for my hall pass a couple times, and had my lunch taken away from me by the cafeteria worker because I cut in line (Thank God I remembered to put on my ID badge that day).  But the "kids" were great for the most part, and the parents were incredibly supportive.  I also had a lot of supportive colleagues in the building, and Tyson, who Saved. My. Ass. with regards to marching band. ("Band camp?" I said.  Tyson says "Yeah, and do you have drill paper?" Me: "What's that?" *facepalm*----marching band is the ONE place SPU really dropped the ball for us music ed people.  One professor in ONE class said "if you want to know about marching band, come see me and I'll give you a show that will make your principal happy."  That was the extent of our instruction....)

But despite the high learning curve, and being very close in age to the students, I felt I made a LOT of progress in one year, and was already plotting how to take over the top spot in the district for choir.  Then I got my RIF notice.  After crying (a lot), and students writing angry letters to the administration and district, Tyson says to me "I want to go to Northwestern, take some trumpet lessons from someone in the CSO, but I don't want to go without you."  So I spent that last month or two researching apartments, jobs, how to transfer teaching licenses, etc, and renting a truck for us to move the two of us 2000 miles away from everything and everyone we knew.

*if you have read this far, congratulations! I have to take a break, so stay tuned for the rest of the story, and my conclusions about what to do with the rest of my career.....