Tenure-Track: The First Semester Check-In Reflection

This week,  I wrap up my first semester as tenure-track faculty. 

In case you missed it, I left my 15-year position as a junior high language arts teacher in June to become a full-time teacher educator.

How does that happen, you ask?

Since you asked, ahem, the answer actually goes back nearly a decade. I was in my 6th year of teaching.

I began teaching middle school in 2004 in what appeared to be a middle class Chicago suburb… In the first English department meeting of the school year, each ELA  teacher was handed student rosters with the Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT ) test scores from the previous school year. As I looked around the room of a dozen or so teachers furiously highlighting away, I quickly grabbed a highlighter intent to look like I knew what I was doing, but indeed I had no idea. I was told to highlight the students who were “on the bubble” –the students who did not “meet” on the ISAT but were within a few points, so we could “target” these students in our instruction.

from “Snap If You Hear Me”

I began teaching during No Child Left Behind. All my teacher training was in Dewey and Freire, so I resisted the testing culture as much as I could in my teaching practice, but after six years, the constant resistance took its toll. I was, for the most part and as cliche as it sounds, burning out. I was ready to quit.

I contacted my teacher ed program and asked for advice. Advice: I could indeed quit, but I could also get a PhD. What? I had no idea what that meant at the time, but the thought of quitting — all the time I spent in school, all the money I spent on my training — was sickening. So PhD it was.

The following fall, I took a one-year leave of absence without pay and began a doctoral program. We did not have kids and were in a good place financially for me take leave, but I think of it now as an investment. That one year off, that time away from the classroom, gave me much needed perspective on the system I had been resisting and losing.

I went back to the classroom the next year though not to the same classroom and not to the same job.

 I was assigned to teach an intensive reading program, RIGOR, which required a three-period block.  The course was a new, highly prescriptive curriculum designed for “long term” ELLs, English language learners who have attended U.S. schools for seven years or more. Insulted by this “teacher proof” curriculum, I asked to meet with the school dministrator.

“With all due respect,” I said, “ you are paying me a lot of money for my experience, judgment, and skills as a teacher. I have a master’s degree and am half way through a doctorate in English education. Please, let me do my job.”

“Will all due respect,” they said, “we’ve been paying teachers to do their job for years, and still we have these students who cannot read and write on grade level. Follow the program.”

from “Snap If You Hear Me”

I had changed, but nothing else had. Still, I was in a PhD program now while I was teaching junior high. I had higher ed on my side, and for the next five years, I had a renewed sense of purpose and space to make sense of what was happening in schools. I mostly wrote about it. It felt good to tell the stories from the classroom. The doctoral program pushed me to write and to share what I was learning in local, national, and global conferences. I had the opportunity to be alongside other people doing important social justice work, and I felt some agency knowing that I was “resisting” with a community. I think higher ed gave me hope, a sense of hope that I was not able to feel or offer in my junior high school.

In December 2014, I graduated with a PhD in English. I taught junior high during the day. I taught courses in teacher education at night. I wrote book chapters. I started a blog. I presented at conferences. But, most importantly, I found a community of scholars, teachers, authors, librarians, and friends who also wanted teaching to be and do better. I didn’t need a tenure track position to do all this work. So I kept all this going until I could not.

My mind could not be satiated by the work — the teaching, reading, writing. There was so much to do. I felt such an urgency to find answers. But my body, my body could not keep up. It had enough, and I was not healthy.

In the fall of 2018, I began applying for a tenure-track higher ed position and, a few months later, was offered Assistant Professor of Secondary English Education at Oklahoma State University.

Well, what’s it like, you ask?

I accepted the position at OSU because it was not an R1, research one, university. I am a teacher first and foremost, so I wanted teaching to be a priority but still have some time to write. My teaching load would be 2:2, two courses a semester, with the expectation that I would do research and service. During my campus visit, I met with faculty who shared my interests in LGTBQ literature and ethical assessment practices. Above all, I was wanted. This may sound strange, but all I have ever hoped for, as a teacher (and human being), was to be in place where I felt wanted, welcomed. I realize now that No Child Left Behind made every teacher feel like they “didn’t meet,” like they were the reason the school was “failing,” that they were not wanted. I think many teachers feel that way every day.

Within the first week of my new (and only) job, I found out OSU became an R1, and while that would not change my current contract, the culture of the school, college, and university was about to change and is changing.

Still, for the first time since 2010, I had just one job, Assistant Professor at OSU. My job was to teach a young adult literature course on Mondays from 4:20 to 7:00 pm. I got to choose the novels we read! On Tuesdays, I taught a course about teaching reading in secondary classrooms from 7:20 to 10:00 pm. Yikes! But not for me. The “yikes” is for the students who had to take my class after a full day of work, fieldwork, and other courses. Still, it was a joy. I loved teaching both classes. My husband commented that I was beaming and full of smiles when I came home from class. Imagine that, coming home from school energized rather than depleted.

Most Wednesdays, I visited a school to observe a student-teacher, do professional development, or plan a research project. This helped me get to know the landscape of my new community and see Oklahoma.

On Thursdays, I met colleagues to hear about their research and plan new projects together or just write. I am collaborating with four different colleagues, and this has been a great way to get to know my school and hear about the great work people are doing while learning ways I can contribute.

On Fridays, I attended early-career scholar lunches and seminars about grant writing, advising grad students, revamping the C.V., and developing research projects.

I teach, write, research, collaborate, and travel more than ever before because of the flexibility higher ed affords to attend NCTE and regional affiliates conferences like OKCTE and KATE (and GCTE soon). Every state, every region within a state has its challenges but also strengths (and beauty).

I also sleep more. A lot more. Not having to drive 25 miles to one school during the day and 25 miles to another school in the evening and then another 25 miles back home frees up a lot of time for rest.

My body is healing. It is December, and the weather in Oklahoma still invites me to take a long walk outdoors. No polar vortex here (knock on wood).

Any regrets so far, you ask?

While my body is healthier, my heart does ache. I miss the daily contact with young people, I mean young, young people. While teaching just two nights a week offers me time to research and serve, teaching every day was my lifeline, and that is not hyperbole. Knowing students were waiting for me every day, gave me a reason to get up in the morning, someone to read for, someone to write for. For years, I read a book a day knowing the next day that I could give that book away. I wrote every day in the classroom and had an audience to observe my process.

I could not find a tenure-track higher ed position in my home state of Illinois, so to make this change, we had to be willing to relocate. And for us, that meant Stillwater, Oklahoma. I miss family and friends. I didn’t have many friends, but the few I had “got me,” and I could be me unapologetically. I am very aware of my personality quirks here and don’t want to disappoint anyone.

I miss beach volleyball and the amazing women in the sport. It was a few hours each week that I would not be a teacher or think about teaching. I had to be fully present (or get hit in the face with the ball). It was time that I would really play and be playful, using my whole body. And it was time to be with other girls. It took years, years to become and nurture being a part of the Chicago volleyball crowd. It will take some time to figure out what’s next.

Sometimes I am angry. I am angry that I was burning out after year six, that I had to find a way to save my teaching career. I wish I understood how to navigate personal and professional expectations better. I am angry that I could not be a teacher who also reads and writes and serves while also being well-rested.

Teaching is a way of being, and that way of being should be — could be, must be– inherently healthy, yet the daily responsibilities make it nearly impossible. For me, there is no punching the clock or compartmentalizing work-life worries. They are the same. Teaching is with me all the time even when sleeping. I have seen and experienced how the number of classes, preps, students, and duties chips away at teachers’ physical and mental health in such a way that teachers exist in constant ambivalence and imposter syndrome. Who could possibly do it all well?

I want something better for teachers, for the people who are entrusted with our children’s hearts and minds 180 days a year.

What will next semester hold, you ask?

OSU is the place for me, now, where I can work alongside people who are doing the research and making plans that will improve teaching conditions. I believe it. And I have some plans, too. Stay tuned.

As for next semester, I anticipate some changes. There is a saying that I keep hearing around here, We are protecting you. Colleagues say this to me to let me know that they don’t want me to be overwhelmed my first semester while also indicating that things will become more complicated.

I will let you know in the spring blog post: Tenure-Track: The Second Semester Check-In Reflection — or Survival Tactics. We shall see.

Will you write with me this month? Join the 5-Day Monthly Writing Challenge with teachers and by teachers. See our flyer for more information and sign-up for reminders (if you have not already done so).