Why I Am Leaving

by Lyn Fairchild

I suppose I could blame it on cafeteria food: the fact that the other day, having snorfed down a chicken-rice-cheesy coagulate - yesterday's remains dressed up for today's consumption - I was compelled to interrupt a student conference and run pell-mell to the lavatory. I had, as Grandma used to say, "the trots." Trot I did and then trotted back to cancel my conference. That's something new for Teacher Lyn, who thirteen years ago woulda stuck it out. This time I grabbed what was left of my dignity and clutching my abdomen, departed for home.

Like the kids, I can't wait to get home each day.

I'm tired of cafeteria food. I'm tired of faculty lounge gossip and grumpy colleagues. I'm tired of study hall duty, dress code violations, and mandatory evening event attendance. I'm tired - and this is a kind appellation - of interventionist parents. I'm weary of searching for a private place to make a phone call. If I have to describe in detail once more to a clueless ob/gyn nurse "the nature of my complaint" with the roar of the copier in my ears and several male faculty standing behind me, I think I'll go postal.

Why don't we have a similar expression for teachers losing it? Of all the professions that dearly need it...Go "nails on chalkboard"? Go "bad apple"? Go "ninth hour ninja"?

Yet, I am not so "done," as a colleague says, that you can "stick a fork in me." I still love the thrill of a cool lesson plan coming together and the surprise and delight that accompanies a student joke or a particularly fine piece of student work. I am so proud of my group of rambunctious, high-maintenance tenth graders who after much squabbling, produced a Scorsese-like cinematic interpretation of Macbeth, complete with Mafia hits, mansions and close-ups on highly shined shoes.

There's that and Missy's prose ode to the high heel, or Jed's deeper understanding of philosophers than mine, or Anisha's world rank in Indian dance while taking the most rigorous course load: these kids are truly amazing. Every day I laugh. Every day I'm in awe. But my attention is elsewhere.

It figures: I have been in school for 30 years, with 17 of those spent on my own education. Even then, I took up the entire class presenting oral reports to my classmates. How patient those seventh grade teachers and students were with me. So it would make sense I'm in need of a change. Ironically, last year as department chair I helped dismiss a guy who spent classes pressing "Play" on the VCR and holding fireside chats with sagging seniors. I swore every day that I would put myself out to pasture before I forced someone else to have to do it to me. The hills are lookin' mighty alive from this vantagepoint of spring fever and personal burnout.

It's time to go home. It's time to go inside and introvert and shed my teaching persona for a while. Like a heavy drapery, I yank the mantle of that persona over my head each morning and find it hard to breathe through. I'm no longer patient, and teachers must be, above all things, patient.

Next year I will develop curriculum and teach some adjunct courses, one of which will be online. I will no longer have to rise before 7:00 a.m. nor define my life solely by the school calendar. I won't feel guilty for taking lunch off campus or wearing jeans. And I will write my novel. I will capture the pinnacles and nadirs of this profession and finally have a response to Boston Public, Dangerous Minds, and Kindergarten Cop, those unreal renditions of what we really do as educators. The salary won't be as comfortable, but then again, I suspect I won't be spending as much on de-stressing aids, such as massages, pedicures, and Chinese take-out that I never could afford anyway.

I feel liberated and empowered, not because I'm casting aside chafing chains or loathsome burdens, but simply because I've come to the end of an era, I know it, and no one else has had to tell me so. I really am fortunate.

I wish the same for the rest of my colleagues.

Lyn Fairchild is a longtime contributor to FacultyShack and is the co-author of the recently released book The Compassionate Classroom: Lessons That Nurture Wisdom and Empathy from Zephyr Press and available at Amazon and other book sellers.