Hi,
I know that I normally don’t use “I” as a pronoun here nor do I disclose much at all about who I am IRL (age, gender, etc.) - but I’m going to drop those habits for this post.
You don’t know this, but I’m (sort of) a teacher. I have a bunch of degrees in English Literature and have taught a host of classes at a couple universities in the past. I taught classes at the university-level from 2012-2020 and loved it. [Sorry if I’m older than you may have imagined.] Adored it, actually. Of all the things I’ve ever done, teaching felt the most right.
I feel at home in a classroom, talking to people about some shared interests or common problems. I like reading people’s writing as they try to figure out some issue or demonstrate their still developing understanding of complicated stuff. I like talking to people about books (whether they find them boring or interesting, insightful or dumb). I enjoy working with and around all the non-intellectual issues that sometimes halt people from learning. I like every part of teaching.
2020 was 2020, as you know, and I couldn’t keep teaching. Jobs weren’t available or at least weren’t available to me. This wasn’t the worst thing. Teaching purely online seemed like a nightmare scenario meant to destroy souls and rob hope from hearts, so, I transitioned to doing something associated with learning in the corporate sector and had a truly horrific number of years full of the most vivid self-harming ideations you can imagine. It was a bad time. It paid well, but I really can’t understate how bad a time it was. I longed for some Severance-type ability to stop being a person for the 40-60 hours I worked every week. I dreaded every morning and was, by the end of the day, so numbed by frustration and rotten with dispondency that I spent evenings doing effectively nothing. It was a joyless and harrowing couple years.
Thanks to incredible friends and loved ones, I stopped spiralling for long enough to quit that job and, thanks to the overly generous paychecks, was able to live off my savings for a while. I wrote a book during this time and also started this blog.
As much as I loved (and still love) living a life that centers on reading and writing and watching movies and listening to music and genuinely simply trying to experience the best of the world and have little problem living as frugally as possible, I still wanted (during my year of unemployment/nonemployment) to do something. I wanted to (maybe selfishly or self-centeredly) share what I knew with other people in a more direct way than I do here. This blog is, I know, mostly just idle entertainment. It’s fun to write and (hopefully) fun to read, but I’m under no misconception that these words are meaningful in any serious way. I wanted, then, to (and this is going to sound soooooo naive and IDEALISTIC and narcissistic and arrogant and probably even laughable) help other people if I could and given my very limited skillset I was certain that teaching was really the only way I could effectively help people.
So, then, when there were a glut of articles all across Montreal about the shortage of high school teachers in schools and how schools were wanted and needed to hire people (like me) who had subject matter expertise, teaching experience, but no formal qualifications (i.e. no Teaching Certificate/Brevet in Quebec) - I applied to a fistful of jobs. I didn’t honestly think anything would happen. I figured that it’d just be another attempt in a long series of attempts to do something I wanted to do and thought I could do. These applications would end up like all the applications I’d submitted to dozens of universities. I would hear nothing and, after pouting and getting angry and feeling sorry for myself for a couple days, I’d move on to the next thing.
That didn’t happen.
I interviewed at a couple of schools immediately. The jobs sounded tough, but I was interested. I wanted to be in a classroom again. I missed it. I wasn’t, honestly, thinking much about the students - but more about my own excitement to be back somewhere talking about books, back doing something that feels natural. Some of the interviews went nowhere, but one school was very interested in me. It’s a private school here in Montreal that, for a bunch of reasons, I won’t name explicitly.
I did a phone interview where I was told that I’d be teaching a mixture of ESL (English Second Language) classes as well as some ELA (English Language Arts) classes to Sec 3 (Grade 9), Sec 4 (Grade 10), and Sec 5 (Grade 11) students. It sounded fun. The interviewer was nice. We had a good conversation about pedagogy and books and the usual sorts of things.
I was quickly (in a matter of hours) invited to interview at the school. I met with a couple of administrators. We spoke for around an hour about classroom management and syllabus design and all the teacherly things that (I’m sure) are damagingly boring to most - but were really exciting to me. They explained that I’d be taking over the classes of someone who was leaving the school. It was not a split ESL/ELA position, but a straight ESL position. I made it clear that I did not have experience teaching dedicated ESL classes, but they assured me that this wasn’t an issue. The students were mostly allophones. They’re comfortable speaking and writing in English, so the classes are run, more or less, as regular English classes.
I asked some questions about the students. I wanted to know about their behavior, etc. I was told that they were very nice, very dilligent. The students, they said, cared about their studies, were polite, and so on. Of course, I knew that even a dilligent high school student is effectively a psychopath - so took all of their kind words with many cubic tonnes of salt. At the end of the conversation, I asked how many students were in the classes. The average, they said, was around 35.
5 classes with an average of 35 students in each class (never less than 30 and never more than 40). So, I’d be responsible - I did the math real quick - for around 175 students aged 14-16.
I paused for a long time. This seemed insane, but they reassured me in various ways. I wanted this job, so it didn’t take much. I wanted to believe that this very clearly untenable position was tenable.
They offered me the job later that afternoon. I asked to see the syllabus designed by the departing teacher and they shared a very vague set of documents. I asked whether the departing teacher had lesson plans, teaching material, etc. for the near future and they said yes. This was an opportunity I wanted even if I was terrified that I wasn’t up for the challenge, that I was ill-equipped to walk into the classrooms that I was being invited into. I figured, somehow, that maybe my terror of the job was natural. It’s normal, maybe, to underestimate oneself in the way I was doing. I shouldn’t, I thought, walk away from a challenge merely because it seems like a challenge. I’d get to teach again. It would feel good. I would feel useful maybe.
I said “yes” to the job on a Thursday. I spent an hour signing papers, getting a tour of the school, meeting way too many people, and getting my laptop/iPad set up on the Friday. I went home afterwards and tried to figure out what the students in each of the classes had done thus far this year (almost nothing), what they needed to do in the near term (entirely unclear), and what they ultimately had to accomplish before the end of the semester (pass?).
I had no idea what was going on. No, that’s too generous. I had no idea if or what may or may not have been going or not going on or not on. The lesson plans for the next week were sparse/nonexistent. The teaching material either uninteresting (both to me and any sane child) or nonexistent. The goals of the classes weren’t so much goals as thinly veiled assurances that something might happen in the course of nine months even if no one could describe or see evidence of that something. The various platforms used by the institution (for homework, for grades, for attendance, for classroom material) were incomprehensible and arcane. I was, for the first week, locked out of the course platforms that the students use for all their work. The situation, from the very first, was a disaster.
I have never been this overwhelmed (including the time I woke up in an unrecognizable place without money or phone or socks). This job would have been difficult with all the help in the world. With no help whatsoever, it seemed like a death sentence. I would be eaten alive by students and they’d have every right to pick their teeth with my arrogant bones.
A weekend of 18 hour days and roughly sleepless nights later, I walked into a classroom on Monday morning to students who could not have been more hostile or indifferent to my presence. If you have ever wanted to feel like much less than a person, I invite you to try to teach high school in the middle of a term. Without having said a word, they held me in active disdain or didn’t deign to acknowledge me at all. Simply taking attendance - confirming that they are present - was a hardwon affair.
This, though, isn’t their fault. It will never be their fault. They are children. They’re just trying to get through the day and the novel presence of a stranger at the front of a classroom is (at best) just a barrier to their enjoyment of that day. I was not expecting angels or even, really, fully-formed people. That said, I was not expecting the callous, cruel, and genuinely shocking disrespect (to me, other students, other teachers, or even themselves) that I’ve been confronted with every day for the last very little while from morning to afternoon. If I weren’t living it, I would genuinely be shocked by what is happening. The situation is such that I am explicitly grateful that none of my students is armed (as far as I know) or (so far) inclined towards physical violence.
[Sorry, I intended this to be funnier than it is. Really. I’m trying to sort out of my feelings about everything that’s happening, hence the writing, and normally humor is one way of processing things - but I guess this isn’t yet one of those things I want to joke about.]
I won’t, here, offer a litany of the things that have happened in the classrooms I’ve shared with the 175 or so teenagers. There’s too much to recount. I can say, though, that what has happened least is teaching. In any 60 minutes I spend with kids, I would say I manage to teach around 10 minutes of material. This would be a successful 60 minutes. Getting students to stay seated is difficult. Ensuring that the student across the room who is literally screaming at the top of their lungs is doing so because they merely think it’s funny rather than because they are actually injured is challenging. Grading writing assignments that literally contain gibberish is trying. Requesting that they open a book entails 50/50 odds that I’m insulted to my face (and the book stays closed).
I don’t think I’m a bad teacher, but I am very evidently a fucking terrible teacher for these students.
For the last short while, I have woken up and set about failing myself and them for the day, then gone home and tried to figure out how I can avoid failing myself and them and then slept fitfully in panicky little hour bursts and then woken up again, sweating, certain that not only will no one learn anything in the course of this day, but I will, inevitably, be demeaned multiple times by young people who, honestly, might not even know any better. The best part of these days is the brief moment before entering the classroom where I imagine that somehow I will manage to speak in such a way that they (sort of) listen or present material that they (sort of) take an interest in or any other fantasy that the classroom will function like a classroom rather than a holding cell for teenagers.
The thing that fucks me up is that I’m (partially) to blame for this situation. I am not a high school teacher. I’m not. I should not have applied for the job. I should not have interviewed for it. I should not have agreed to do it. I am not qualified or able to do this. I know a lot about books, but that is fucking meaningless to kids who need something other and more than knowledge. They need help that I don’t know how to provide. I do not have the means or knowledge to deal with many of the issues I’m facing. I don’t know what I’m doing. Not only do I not think I’m helping them, but I’m low-key certain I’m hurting them. I’m proving, daily, that the education system is broken and unhelpful. I’m underlining a point that they came to know, surely, long ago. Education is a farce. It is a song and dance between parents and administrators who pretend that something edifying transpires between morning and afternoon while students and teachers recognize that whatever intellectual learning happens is accidental and that the majority of time the building is just a psychological and emotional experiment good for only very few.
Maybe I’m over-generalizing. Maybe my situation or the insitution to which I (right now) belong is exceptional. I hope that’s true (even if I don’t believe it). The fact remains that I’m in this situation and I, somehow, have to sort out how to deal with it. I’m poorly set-up to do this job, but maybe others know what to do and how to do it. There must be answers? Actionable steps to survive these days? To thrive even?
I’m not so sure. I’m really not sure anyone knows what to do with this situation. The internet and all its teacher blogs tends to refer to “large classrooms” as 25 students rather than 38. The disciplinary strategies (gross, I know) suggested by many at different schools literally do not exist at the institution I work at.
I’ve spoken to literally anyone who’ll listen at the school and the advice is always the same. Do what you can. The ones who want to learn will learn and those who don’t won’t. It’s educational triage. I’m responsible for around 175 students and in order to help 40 I need (it seems) to all but disregard 135. If I try to attend to the 135, then the 40 who want to learn won’t. There’s no clear way of doing both. There are too many kids with too many different needs and far too many different capabilities. It’s impossible. It’s fucking tragic. It breaks my stupid heart. It’s not their fault. They deserve better.
They deserve better than me, certainly. They also deserve classes where they aren’t just one amongst dozens. They deserve curricula that actually address their interests, needs, and desires. They deserve an institution that holds them accountable rather than infantilizes them and appeases their parents. They deserve a school that is run as a place for education (in the broadest sense of the term) rather than as a business. They deserve to be offered support and guidance individually (especially if they have special learning needs which, btw, approximately 30% of my students do (… that’s 60 kids with adhd, dyslexia, behaviorial disorders, and/or other coded learning issues who are not getting any seeming or serious help nor are teachers (me, hi) getting any sort of guidance on how to help them meaningfully (legit have not had one conversation with anyone in the school about any of the students with IEPs. NOT ONE.).
But more than all that they deserve in a school, they deserve a view of the world at large that is inspiring rather than demoralizing and outright disturbing.
Walking the hall the other day from one class to the next, I was behind two Sec 2 or Sec 3 students. I heard them talking about how you can, when you’re older, take on a bunch of credit card debt and loans and things and do whatever you want and then when the banks ask for their money you just unalive yourself. They weren’t laughing. It wasn’t a joke. The problem, as they saw it, was whether their debt would then have to be paid back by a family member. That was the only possible problem with their future plan. I lost track of them in the crowd and went where I needed to go to (try to) teach a different set of young people in an attempt to prepare them for a world that, truthfully, I don’t even have much respect for or faith in.
And now? Now I don’t know what to do. It feels like each and every one of my students would be better served by anyone other than me. In fact, it feels like they’d be better served by a quiet room and minimal supervision. Yet I also feel that I have a responsibility to try to teach them even if I know (I really know) that I will not succeed. I will, at best, (try to) ensure that they do not die during the 60 minutes we share a room. I will stave off panic attacks by smoking too many cigarettes and breathing deeply and repeating sad, embarassing self-encouragement to myself (be brave, you can do this) and trying to put out of mind the lies and insults and aggression of kids who don’t, won’t, or can’t know any better.
Is this the best that can be hoped for? I quit, walk away from something I want but clearly do poorly, or I stay, brace myself daily for something that makes me cry and disassociate for long periods? What a fucking joke. Also, how fucking shameful that I’m writing all this out to you - speaking in I for the first time - in the desperate hope that I will better know what I ought to do now or you will somehow hear what I’m saying and not be disappointed or outright repelled by this maybe ill-conceived candor. I don’t fucking know. I’m not equipped to be this poorly equipped for life as it seems to come.
I guess we’ll see what happens. Or at least I will. Maybe I’ll be back. Maybe we’ll be back. I don’t know. Really. Thanks for listening. Sorry this is a fucking downer. Stay out of school, I guess? Fuck.
Selfishly, for the sake of the kids, there's no one I'd rather see trying (however successfully) to help them than you. Whether that's worth you having to wake up in hell every day, not so sure! But trust your hell-ROI assessment more than most. Thanks for writing this and giving a reality check to the naive little voice in my head that starts chirping when I read about the teacher shortages, please continue to process the experience here and take our encouragements to heart!
I didn't expect to read something like this when I saw a new post, but that makes your message much more meaningful, I think. Changing "we" to "I" makes a vast difference. This sounds like a miserable situation, and I'm sorry you're experiencing it. As far as commiserating via the internet remains a possibility, I'd like to engage in it. My college experience has been abysmally bad, far, far worse than I could possibly have imagined. A crumbling, top-heavy administration and students who are emotionally calcified and intellectually destitute leave very little opportunity for any sort of meaningful evangelization, be it spiritual, academic, or otherwise.
I've met and talked with people very much like the Section 2/3 students you described. There really isn't much to be said beyond that. Trying to speak up, trying to help, trying to withstand their scorn, and trying to keep your mouth shut are all depressingly inadequate options, especially when anti-intellectualism runs rampant. Couple that with an increasingly popular trend amongst the student body to pledge corporate devotion to the integrity of preconceived ideology, and teaching or even speaking as an equal becomes a looming obstacle of near-insurmountable difficulty.
I can't really speak for anyone else who may read this, but I see nothing shameful in your writing. If anything, it's goddamn cathartic. The cycle of moral decay, institutional corruption within academia, and mean acerbity within the student body, catalyzed by an ever-plummeting standard for scholarly-no, just *human*-integrity, is a chimera, fusing together the soporific, brutish laziness and calculated cruelty of man in a nauseating union that even the most reserved and genteel of honest agnostic scholars would claim teeters upon the brink of godlessness. Seeing someone acknowledge the repulsive inner workings of what's supposed to be a bastion of intelligentsia and human excellence is immensely gratifying (and even if the institution in question is only a high school, this is, after all, where the young are committed to adulthood, so the dramatic language feels appropriate).
To a certain extent, it's the knowledge that the flippant anger and disdain students practice is largely done from a lack of understanding that makes the actions sting. We're all created with *like* essential natures; witnessing the downfall of someone who could have been noble but squandered their ability because they didn't know what they were doing is difficult to watch, and it's even harder when any attempts to help are misinterpreted or blatantly rejected.
I wish I could offer advice, but I'm in a similar situation, and not really sure how to deal with it either. If it helps, know that I know well and am currently living through a similar experience to those of the interested students you've described (albeit in college), and that I don't think you're to blame for anything in this situation. Your writing has actually helped me to work through some difficult times; I've lost count of how many times I've read your article "Beneath the Pavement" after a terrible day, and the image of Technology Nun conjured in "Metaphorically Terrifying" has lingered in my mind since you shared it, appearing every time I encounter a cringeworthy attempt to impose a metaphor onto a subject in which metaphor definitely doesn't belong.
Whatever you decide to do, whether at work or here on Substack, I'm sure that there is someone who will be helped. Please, at least take solace in that; it is of vital importance. As for the naysaying members of the populace . . . offer what you've got. If they won't take it, fuck 'em. Learning is a two-way discipline, and if you peel away as much of the intermediate detritus preventing clear communication as possible, it'll still be up to the student to bridge the gap. God bless both you and your students; He knows everyone needs it. It certainly sounds as if you're putting in all you've got, so external authority isn't a bad thing to appeal to, I guess.