Thoughts on unpaid labor and the teaching profession

This morning, I had someone text me with a "hey have you seen this thing where some student teacher was on TikTok saying they should be paid for their internship?" followed by something to the effect of "kids these days." 

Apparently one of my choral ed colleagues had responded to this undergrad on TikTok (or by posting his own thing?) by saying that student teaching is a class, and he's doing all the work teaching them how to do something they can't already do, so therefore interns should not be paid.

There's a lot to unpack here. I'm going to go in backwards order because I think that will help me explain better.

First, the internship is not a "class." Yes, it's credits they have to register and pay for, and in that respect it's a "class" but it's not a class in the respect that we expect them to go in knowing nothing. In fact, we expect them to go in and actually be able to do the full job (with a metric ton of extra paperwork), but with the support and scaffolding of an experienced mentor teacher. Being a mentor teacher (at least, a good one) IS a lot of work, because of course mistakes will be made, and the extra planning for guidance and correction is work. I have no dispute with that.

So I'm going to start off with my first point that mentor teachers should be paid, and I don't mean a pittance of $250 or credits towards license renewal. They should be paid their market rate hourly wage for the minimum 10-20 extra hours of work per week they put in which is an idea supported by research on the importance of mentor teachers. But this idea that student teachers come in completely unprepared and the mentors have to build ALL the skills from scratch is not accurate, either. Unfortunately, we all know there's no nuance with social media.

To that point, experienced teachers need to hear: Many colleges are limited in the number of credits we are allowed to require for teacher preparation. If you currently have more than 10 years experience, you probably remember taking more than 4 years to complete your music education degree, and probably between 18 and 22 credits every single term. Undergrad programs are not allowed to do that anymore. But let's be honest, even if it was a ten year preparation program, we all know there's no way to teach them everything. But it means programs have started focusing on aspects of teaching that we know are more important in the long term (problem solving, how to look things up, etc) but lacking in the "I know how to analyze figured bass perfectly" aspects. The result is mentor teachers probably are perceiving interns as having "holes" in their knowledge and I'm sure that's where my colleague is coming from. So yes, the mentor is still teaching the intern some things, but that was always the case anyway, and doesn't change that that should be paid labor and the intern is not a blank slate. 

The perception also that this current generation of student teachers (or students in general) are more entitled than previous generations is absolute old people nonsense. I do think there are some major differences in how younger people interact with others because of the prevalence of technology, and that makes them appear self-involved (and more prone to anxiety-related disorders). But the awareness that makes them anxious comes from that same technology---knowledge of the bigger picture, the wider world, and other things that previous generations were protected/kept from---and, point three: that makes them far more intolerant of injustices. So while older people might react with "meh, I survived it, toughen up" the younger people are going Why? WHY should we "toughen up"? Why should we be ok with being underpaid and ignored and underappreciated? Why should we accept a full unpaid work day and then go wait tables for 7 hours? 

I mean, from a teacher educator standpoint, I want my undergrads to have time to fully reflect on their day, time to refine plans, time to research new ideas, time to collect and create templates that will save them time later when they're on their own, ESPECIALLY because of the credit cap! If they're working even a part time job, they can't do ANY of that. They spend their entire internship in survival mode and then we wonder why the attrition rate is 50% in the first 5 years. Imagine if we just gave student teachers a tuition waiver so they didn't have to take out loans the final semester/quarters of their 4th year how much difference would that make? Or they could use their loans to live on so they don't have to work a second job? Why are we ok with indoctrinating undergrads with the idea that to be a teacher it's ok to need a second job? Especially when we know wages have been stagnant and the buying power of a second job isn't as high as it was when WE (the older people) went to school?

I was THRILLED when I saw this story about the Michigan legislature working on a way to pay student teachers. Their reasoning was basically that student teaching is like a medical residency (rotations of age levels, types of classes, guided practice but the expectation of independence) and we should treat it as such, especially if we intend to a) retain ANYONE in the profession and b) expand the current majority demographic of teachers to include more than middle and upper class white folks. Michigan, I hope you get it passed, I hope it works. I hope that becomes the model everywhere. 

Here's the real point of this essay: The current model of education everywhere, not just in the United States, relies 100% on massive amounts of unpaid labor. So is the internship meant to train people how to do the job well? Or is it to train them how to accept the exploitative system as it is? If it's the former, we should be proud that undergrads want to change the system. But if it's the latter, why are we still wondering why attrition and retention is such a problem?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thinking about C and abortion

 This post is about the evolution of my views on abortion. So here is your content warning.

I grew up in a moderately conservative household. We went to church, and my parents complained about environmentalists, but we recycled and my dad proudly belonged to a union for his work. My parents had pretty moderate, centrist views on things like cannabis, guns, and abortion. I learned what abortion was when I was about 10 years old, watching Dirty Dancing and trying to make sense of the story. I had no idea what being "in trouble" or "knocked up" meant, so I asked my mom. She explained it pretty well I think, considering the age I was. She also told me that she knew a few people who had had them, and while she didn't agree with it because of religious reasons, she was ok with it being legal.

She also remembered her parents telling her about situations like the one depicted in the movie. Desperate women with no other options, entrusting their lives and reproductive health to a sketchy, underground, black market system. Women who lost their lives or their future ability to have children to a botched, unregulated and unsafe procedure. That stuck with me. 

A decade later, I was in Chicago trying to get birth control pills while I was in between jobs and had no insurance. My prior experience in Seattle was just to pop in at Planned Parenthood and get 3 months of pills for free. In Chicago, they had a law that limited how many pills you could get, and they cost a lot. A big chunk of my non-existent paycheck (I was subbing, and we ended up selling my truck a few months later to pay our rent). That was the first time I realized that the state you live in makes a difference to your access to these things. Or the consequences of not having insurance in a country with a for-profit system.

About 6 years after that, and after moving back to Washington, I became pregnant with my first child (who is now pushing 13 and in FULL MIDDLE SCHOOL mode). I was also in a summer masters degree program in Chicago, so I spent most of my 2nd trimester on the "L" and in the Deering library. While waiting on the train platform one day after class, I saw one of my former HS students, "C," at that time in her early 20s. We hugged and started catching up, and she noticed my belly. After discussing for a bit, I learned that she too was pregnant, about 12 weeks. I started excitedly chittering away about how great that was and she dropped this on me, "Well, actually, I've decided to get an abortion." 

I regret the next part and I hope wherever she is, C forgave me for it. My response was to say "no, don't do that! If you need help, let me adopt your baby. I'm sure my husband would agree."

She then explained her reasoning. Boyfriend was in jail. Estranged from her parents, no help there. She had pre-eclampsia already (VERY early and life threatening). To carry the pregnancy to term, she would have to quit her job to be on bed rest. Losing her job meant losing insurance. That meant to get health care, she would have to live on food stamps, section 8 or project housing, and Medicaid. Her next words still haunt me: "and I will be damned if I raise a baby in poverty like I was."

And I stopped arguing. 

A few years later, debating this issue with a church friend, I relayed C's story and his response was "well what did she think was going to happen? Don't want the consequences, don't have sex!"

(btw, if you think that, you're a horrible person, full stop. A child is not a punishment. And if you really believe in the sanctity of life and that a child has a soul at conception, it's even an even more horrific viewpoint. Nevermind the fact that you can't legislate sex in a secular, pluralistic society based on the interpretation of one sect of one religion though it's clear they really want to try---ask yourself. Who does that benefit?).

And I asked why he had a problem with it. "It doesn't affect you in any way shape or form, even financially through taxes---since it's illegal for PP or anyone else to use federal funds for abortions. But a forced birth DOES affect you. Your taxes and insurance premiums. Your overcrowded schools and overworked teachers." And I also asked him why he didn't support free and widely available birth control. He didn't have a good answer for any of that, just tried to talk around it but always came back to the child-as-punishment-for-the-woman-for-having-sex. 

(We are no longer friends. I tried to salvage the friendship for a long time but he did the devil's advocate/false equivalency for the Nazis in Charlottesville and that was my line. 20 years of friendship down the drain because a supposed follower of Jesus can't accurately identify evil).

I guess all of this is to say, if you think you are pro-life, examine your feelings about the following things with the understanding that it is not possible to make having sex illegal so just let go of that Puritan sh*t right now:

    1. How do you feel about widely available and required comprehensive sexual education, that teaches people how their bodies and pregnancy actually work? 

    2. How do you feel about widely available and free birth control?

    3. How do you feel about providing free pre-natal care including and up to 50% paid leave for medical distress during pregnancy?

    4. How do you feel about 6-12 months of required paid maternity leave?

    5. How do you feel about free school lunches for every kid?

    6. How do you feel about subsidized housing? For citizens only? For immigrants?

    7. How do you feel about a secular entity taking care of these things for all women in the United States? (since asking churches to do it has clearly not worked in the past, nor do they have the capacity to handle it now--it also lets every atheist off the hook for contributing to a solution).

Because if the answer to any of these questions is "they need to work harder and figure it out" you are not pro-life. If you're actually worried about saving the life of the fetus because you've decided against science (and the Bible) then you would support all of the policies above because they reduce the number of abortions. Those problems are why my student C decided to get an abortion. If she had been forced to carry the fetus to term, it would have killed her. Explain to me how that is "pro-life." Go ahead. I'll wait.