Recently, in honor of World Teachers’ Day, I wrote a post about why teaching can be the worst, and why it’s the absolute best. In that post, I said, “There are a host of myths about teaching and teachers that I will delineate in a different post later on.”

Welcome to…Later On. Granted, “myths about teaching” is hardly ground-breaking content; there are a host of blogs, articles, and social media posts where teachers grouse about how clueless non-educators can be about the teaching profession. I understand this, and I make no claim that this post is anything more than stuff I’d like to get off my chest now that I have the time.

“Summers Off”: Let’s start with a common one, and an easy one to debunk. One of the first gifts I received when I began my teaching career was one of those signs that says, “Three Reasons for Teaching: June, July, August.” Insulting? Maybe. Inaccurate? Yes, and horribly so. Technically, you can say that teachers get “summers off” because they are not officially working in the classroom during that time. But the real myth is in how people interpret that phrase, and how that time is spent. For one thing, teachers are still expected to get additional instruction for themselves during the summer. Call it what you want – professional development, extended education, personal growth, etc. There is an expectation that each teacher find, enroll in, and attend something. It used to be minimum 12 hours of such instruction, so roughly 1.5 to 2 days, depending on how it’s structured. More importantly, this time is UNPAID. The teacher often has to pay a fee out-of-pocket to get this instruction. Occasionally, districts will host their own professional development conference designed to fulfill these requirements at a nominal cost to the teachers. There are also certain organizations that host events designed for teachers at minimal cost. Either way, it’s not like the teachers run out of the building after the last bell rings and go on vacation until next year’s first bell rings. There are commitments required of them even when they’re technically off-contract.

The other problem with this myth is the notion that a teacher’s paychecks during the summer months are somehow “money for nothing.” Here’s how things work in reality: A typical teacher contract is based on a Daily Rate of Pay multiplied by the Number of Contract Days (Instructional + Non-Instructional, such as district staff development and workdays). Let’s say your Daily Rate is $350 with a contract of 187 days >> $350 x 187 = $59,840. $59,840 ÷ 12 = $4986.67, which would be your gross monthly pay. Keep in mind, those 187 days are worked during the school year, so the paychecks for non-contract months like June and July are actually deferred payments. Work now, earn later. Definitely NOT money-for-nothing.

“Teachers only work 187 days a year? Wimps. I work 365.” No, you do NOT. The average worker on a 5-day week with 2 weeks of vacation yields 5 x 50 = 250 days of work. Yes, it is 63 more days than a teacher contract, but that typical worker also leaves after 8 hours. Teachers often stay well past their contract time, usually to help students and/or grade papers. Keep in mind, too, that those 63 days are NOT PAID. Also, show me another profession where, if you have to take a day off, you also have to provide a complete plan for a substitute worker – who will likely be untrained for your job – so that the task you’re missing that day still gets completed.

Teaching is inherently altruistic: Ah, yes, how people try to justify paying teachers less. I remember sitting at a summer conference for economics teachers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas when a presenter was talking about disparities in pay between teachers and certain workers in private sector finance jobs. She literally said, to a group of teachers, “you all are somewhat selfless and motivated by compassionate forces, so you’re willing to accept lower salaries.” You can imagine the chorus of responses. She was trying to justify the disparity with an assumption about the teaching profession. It is an all-too-common refrain anytime someone wants to justify obscene compensation for one group against unfairly low compensation for another: “You’re not in it for the money; you’re in it as a ‘calling.’” It’s ridiculous. I prefer the philosophy espoused by the Joker in The Dark Knight: “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” A good teacher deserves to be paid as such. The overarching problem in society as that the system doesn’t value education, as an industry, the way it does others like finance or entertainment. One might also think, “Just teach college or private school and make more money.” Wrong again. The fact is, as underpaid as a typical public school teacher is, he/she is making more money than is likely in a collegiate or private school setting. Society doesn’t really value education. (Yet another future blog topic.) Mercifully, beginning teacher compensation has increased substantially since I accepted an annual salary of $21,000 per year when I started in 1994. Society has at least begun to figure out that better pay draws better teachers. But there’s still a long way to go.

Teachers “ended up” there: This myth is essentially born of a favorite bullsh** maxim you might’ve heard – “Those who can, do; Those who can’t, teach.” I am ashamed to admit that my own father uttered this to me once when I was younger. (Although I won’t be delineating any of my daddy issues anytime soon.) This one is patently insulting, assuming that the person who stands in front of your children (or yourself) is only there because they failed at what they really wanted to do. Typically, this myth is accessed when someone simply doesn’t like something about the teacher – personality, how the teacher treated their precious little one at some point, you name it – so they grasp at an intentionally demeaning idea in an effort to somehow reduce the teacher’s authority by diminishing their purpose in the profession. Because if you ended up there, surely you shouldn’t garner any respect, right? But rest assured, I and the vast majority of my colleagues could have chosen a multitude of careers instead of teaching. Heck, during my first five supposed “summers off,” I looked around for other jobs and received interviews and offers. But none of them ultimately held the appeal of my teaching career as I was building it in those early years.

Teaching is easy to get into: This myth is basically a corollary to the previous one. And it’s another one I’m ashamed to admit I have heard in my own family. You might’ve heard something like this – “I’ll try to do ___________, but if not, I’ll just teach.” Beware anytime someone suggests they can just proceed into a given field; it’s dismissive and disrespectful. Oh, you’ll just move into a profession in which it’ll take years to feel competent, and even more to feel like you’re actually doing well? You’ll just go into a profession where you have to manage the behavior of other people’s children and learn to hold their attention well enough to help them actually learn something? This myth isn’t ridiculous or insulting; it’s laughable. It assumes that all you need to teach is knowledge of your subject and perhaps some PowerPoint slides. It doesn’t acknowledge the need for presentation skills, or patience, or classroom management ability, or a host of other skills that a teacher draws from on any given day. It ignores the specialized abilities that are minimal for the most marginally competent teacher. Considering the exodus of qualified, certified teachers from the profession into other jobs, along with the teacher shortage they leave behind, you would think this myth would rightfully die. Instead, we still have a teacher shortage, and more districts than ever find themselves filling jobs with uncertified teachers. If teaching was so easy to pursue, these things wouldn’t happen.

Teachers only teach to the test: This myth is a recent favorite among people who like to decry the current system of state assessment and accountability. And on one level, I agree with them – the Texas system of assessment and accountability is kind of a mess…but that’s another post for another time. “Teaching to the test” itself, as a criticism, is a myth because the reality is, ALL good teaching teaches to the test. When I taught AP Macroeconomics for a dozen years, I was expected to teach to the test. It was literally my job as the instructor to offer enough instruction for my students to succeed on the AP Exam. Give them all the tools they need. On a broader level, curriculum and pedagogy are driven by knowledge and skills, i.e., what students should know and be able to do as a result of instruction.  For an athletic team, the test is the game, and all preparation, instruction, practice, and coaching teaches toward success in that event. For a music ensemble or a theater troupe, the test is the performance, and all preparation, instruction, and rehearsal teaches toward success in that event. So it goes for academic classes, as well. When a geography class is studying a unit on Latin America, all preparation, instruction, and practice work teaches toward knowledge and skills associated with that region. Will there be some drill-and-practice? Probably. Will certain themes and topics be covered multiple times? Absolutely, especially things with which students appear to struggle. There is nothing wrong with this. Do you really think the teacher simply offers a series of high-minded lectures with no discernible target in mind? Of course not. Good educational planning is often done in reverse. The teacher identifies the learning targets and plans an instructional sequence leading to them. They teach to the test. If you, as a parent or student, cannot stand the activities being used in the STAAR era, your quarrel is with the test itself, not the practice of teaching to the test. And I will gladly join your battle with STAAR, because it’s a well-intended system that has run amok in its evolution. Let’s create a better test and teach to it. You’ll be surprised at how much instruction improves, and how students enjoy the experience more.

Teachers try to indoctrinate students: This myth is definitely a more recent phenomenon, and it’s primarily driven by politics. Typically, the people promoting this myth are the same ones decrying nebulous concepts like CRT, DEI, and “woke ideology” in the schools, despite the fact that they cannot cite any specific evidence of their existence. Nevertheless, the narrative promoted in this myth is the same as it’s always been…that you, your values, and your very way of life are under attack by these horrible teachers who entered the profession primarily to carry out some illicit intent. These same educators who they’ll characterize as incompetent imbeciles are still somehow so smart and crafty that they’re secretly conspiring to indoctrinate your kids into a belief system that runs counter to everything you hold dear. It’s the politics of anger, because the whole world is clearly going down the drain, and someone has to be blamed for it, damn it. This mindset is literally as old as politics. Tell a group of people that their lives and the world they live in is terrible, and it’s someone else’s fault. Teachers have become a convenient scapegoat just as they were in previous historical eras. But the truth is that the vast majority of teachers don’t have time to inject their own political, social, religious, or other beliefs into instruction. The demands of the curriculum, classroom management, grading, and other tasks are too great for anyone to worry about it. And the power and influence needed to succeed at any indoctrination effort are typically beyond most teachers’ reach. We’re literally trying to get students to sit down, pay attention, and do their work. If a teacher really had the power to indoctrinate, most would use that power to get students to show up to class on-time, participate appropriately, and complete their work.

Coaches are lazy and poor teachers: I saved the worst for last, and it’s especially appropriate because Texas HS Coaches Day was just last Friday, November 7. This myth has been around forever. It’s certainly been spread through movies and television, and it’s your typical low-hanging fruit at any given school: Coach So-and-So is a lazy, terrible teacher. He only shows movies in class, no one does any work, he doesn’t care if you come to class…yada, yada, yada. This myth is also, in my opinion, the most egregious based on three decades in public education. And I worked in social studies, so believe me, I taught with coaches. Lots of coaches. Here’s the thing about coaching: Coaching IS teaching. You help students establish knowledge and skills about their sport and their opponent. You help them build on what they do well and fix what they do poorly. And you work to position them to succeed. You do these same things in any academic classroom, whether in a core subject or an elective. This is why I can probably count on one hand the number of coaches who I believe were poor classroom teachers. And you know what? Those coaches were also poor coaches. You know what else? I can probably count at least the same number of “non-coach” teachers who were poor teachers. The point is, not everyone’s cut out to teach, regardless of whether or not they are hired as an athletic coach. What’s more, not everyone who is cut out to teach is also cut out to coach. There’s an even bigger demand on coaches in terms of time, commitment, knowledge, patience, dedication, and compassion. Sure, there’s a stipend, but it does not come close to covering the true value that coaches bring to students. Instead of lauding teachers while dogging coaches as somehow inferior to teachers, society should be lauding coaches even more for the extra time and care they devote. Same for band directors. Same for instructors in other fine arts. Same for all the club sponsors who stay after school and work on weekends with students. You really have no idea how many adults in a typical school go above-and-beyond for your children until you’ve been around them day after day, week after week, year after year. Chief among these are coaches. And while it may seem convenient to cite specific news items about specific coaches in specific places who are placed on administrative leave, dismissed, or even arrested for something salacious, then say, “All these coaches are awful,” remember this: Those events made the news because they deviate from the norm. Your local news is ultimately interested in ratings. “Breaking News: The coaches at your local school all worked late today to keep your kids safe and help them improve” doesn’t get ratings. It doesn’t get any attention.

That really is the bottom line regarding myths about teachers: It’s all about attention. “Teachers work hard, don’t get paid enough, and generally do a good job” is a true statement. It also doesn’t capture much attention, whether on a news broadcast, in a movie or TV show, or certainly on social media. What will get attention? Complaining in general, but also complaining about teachers – how they get summers off, or how they should stop asking for higher salaries, or how they’re only teachers because they can’t do anything else, or how easy it is to become a teacher, or how they just teach to the test, or how they’re trying to poison the minds of children, or how this or that coach is lazy and good-for-nothing. They’re all easy attention-getting claims to make, even though they’re untrue. But Americans are regularly fed the notion that our education system is failing, so these myths gain traction as people grasp for explanations. It is true that education in America has problems, especially compared to other nations, but the reasons and potential solutions for these issues are actually complex and require us to examine ourselves, both individually and collectively. And people don’t want to deal with complexity, and they certainly don’t want to engage in some tough self-examination. But perhaps it’s time we do, and stop promoting lies about the people who do their best for our children every day.

Above Audio Recorded Using:

• Microphone – Deity S-Mic 2
• Interface – AudioSigma MicHero Classic
• Hardware – iPad Pro 11″ M4
• Software – TwistedWave for iOS
• Additional Software Treatment via MacBook Air M2 13″ – AU HiPass, LoudMax, iZotope RX11 Mouth De-Click, AU GraphicEQ

Recorded in my Home Studio

Sunday, October 5, 2025 was World Teachers’ Day, an international day for celebrating the work of teachers. The day was established way back in 1994 (my first year of teaching), but the intent behind it goes back before I was born, to the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers. If you are or have been a teacher, you should check it out; it’s an interesting read that outlined things you’ve probably talked about at some point in your career. In 1966. Almost 60 years, later, teachers are still fighting to get some of these ideas treated seriously in the U.S., and certainly in Texas.

I haven’t actually been a classroom teacher in 12 years, although I have gotten to use my teaching skills when training teachers and administrators on testing topics – in live presentations, in videos, and even through documents designed to provide guidance. And you might think, “Well, that’s still teaching,” but it’s just not the same. Trainings for adults might be technically called teaching, but there’s an energy in a classroom of actual K-12 students, no matter the age, that is unique. That energy gets even more unique as you examine classrooms for different subjects. An English classroom differs from a math classroom, which differs from a music classroom, which differs from a culinary classroom. They’re all distinctive. They’re all special. For me, as a retired educator, they should all be treated as sacred.

And that, ironically, is ultimately why teaching is the worst. Because although an individual teacher might want the classroom to be considered sacred, or at least treated with respect, reality in the U.S. is that it’s not. From the 1966 Recommendation:

Teaching should be regarded as a profession: it is a form of public service which requires of teachers expert knowledge and specialized skills, acquired and maintained through rigorous and continuing study; it calls also for a sense of personal and corporate responsibility for the education and welfare of the pupils in their charge.

That seems clear and sensible, right? And yet, the teaching profession in 2025 is subject to a monumental variety of forces that, despite what may be good intentions, actually interfere with the teacher’s professional responsibilities, especially in public education. There are a host of myths about teaching and teachers that I will delineate in a different post later on. There are politicians constantly seeking to interfere with the curriculum, either on a general or specific level. Lately, in Texas, it’s all about legal requirements to post the Ten Commandments while at the same time removing any and all suggestion that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are worthwhile concepts. Oh, and be careful not to create any lessons that some parent could construe as “critical race theory” (if they can even define what constitutes a CRT lesson for K-12). There’s going to be interference from whatever the latest social media rage bait is, no matter how ridiculous, undermining the curriculum, whether it’s actual lesson topics or simply books that someone insists are offensive or subversive. And certain subjects, like social studies, are regularly politicized as different topics are tabbed to add or remove from the state requirements. Curriculum revision is a fact of educational life, but too often, it’s influenced by political whims and imaginary threats instead of new knowledge or priorities worth emphasizing.

But curriculum isn’t the only road block for teachers. Remember that the accountability system is supposed to help us “identify failing schools,” which too often means we’re going to hammer the teachers in those schools. We’ll call it “support,” but we’ll also ignore that many schools are failing because the assessment system inherently works against students of, shall we say, a certain socioeconomic and/or demographic status. And behind that support is an ongoing threat of dismissal for the very teachers trying to serve marginalized students. Even among high-performing schools, there’s an inherent pressure related to performance. In the era of A-F accountability, parents and community – particularly in wealthy districts – expect their school to get an A just like so many helicopter parents lose their minds when their precious angel gets any grade below 100. It becomes an obsession. I remember being at a meeting of district administrators early in the A-F era when my district at the time scored 89.7, which rounded up to an A. They literally bought Crush brand sodas for the principals (Because “crushed it,”…get it? <insert eye-roll here>) and encouraged people to cheer and high-five each other. For an 89.7. And just last year, at the last campus where I worked, I sat with the rest of the staff as a central administrator stood in front of us presenting accountability data. Keep in mind, this campus had long struggled with TEA’s metrics (those pesky socioeconomics and demographics) and usually hovered around D and even F territory. Yet this lady talked – earnestly, with a straight face – about how close we were, with just a few “adjustments,” to making an A. “We know how to play TEA’s game now.” I literally had to stifle laughter; maybe I need to start drinking whatever liquor she consumes. That campus did make a C in 2025, but I don’t know if that result was celebrated for its improvement, or if it was reviled because “we thought you could do better.” Either way, the obsession is insane.

That’s ultimately why I treated my job over the past 12 years as “I’m here to help you stay sane.” Because TEA’s system of assessment and accountability really is insane, born of legislative mandates that lie somewhere between absurd and preposterous. I have no doubt that TEA’s staff are doing their best to make it work, but in the end, they are at the behest of politicians. Even the Texas Education Commissioner is himself a politician. He has never been an educator; he was a software developer who won election running unopposed for the Dallas ISD School Board. He has since leveraged his political connections into different positions, including Commissioner in charge of TEA, under the guise of being some kind of expert on public education, despite never having actually worked in public education. He has visited classrooms, but he’s never taught in a classroom. His general perspective on schools is, like it or not, a contrived one, because everybody rolls out the proverbial red carpet when the commissioner is visiting. It’s the nature of the position. Even with the best of intentions, he has never authentically experienced what a classroom teacher experiences.  He’s never had to manage unruly children when the moon is full. He’s never had to grade papers. He’s never had to improvise when a lesson falls flat or technology isn’t working correctly. He’s never had to experience a fire drill, an illegally pulled fire alarm, a malfunctioning fire alarm, or a genuine fire alarm in the middle of class. He’s never had to attend Open House after a difficult day of classes. He’s never had to deal with students who don’t come to class or turn in work. He’s never had to call and e-mail parents when their children aren’t coming to class or turning in work. He’s never had to deal with parents who unjustifiably have problems with his classroom management, his grading, his teaching style, or accusations that he’s catering to his favorite students. He’s never had to sit in ARD meeting after ARD meeting. He’s never had the mind-numbing duty of administering STAAR, either in a testing room or as a monitor of a hall or restroom. And he’s never had to experience an evaluation system that seeks to judge a wide variety of classrooms and teachers, each of which is distinctive in its own right, on a single, one-size-fits-all rubric. He’s also never had to experience the so-called calibration process that administrators are required to struggle through to complete such a rubric. None – I repeat, NONE – of these politicians have been expected to experience the consequences of their mandates and pronouncements. The teachers (and often, the students) are the sufferers of the insanity.

So teaching can be the worst, primarily due to politicians and bureaucrats who never ingest the medicine they’re concocting. And yet…teaching is still The Best. School board members (also politicians) may attend graduation and shake students’ hands, but they don’t experience the truly authentic emotions that teachers get to experience as they congratulate those same students. Those emotions are born of connection. Regular connection, as experts – yes, trained professionals – strive to reach young people and help them learn content and skills, not just because they’re required, not just because they’re in the curriculum or on a test, but because those young people can become better adults through the experience. Sometimes that regular connection happens over the course of several years and is therefore even stronger. Teaching is the best because of that connection leading to celebrations of big moments, like awards, achievements, and milestones such as graduation. Teaching is also the best because of little moments filled with humor, compassion, adversity, frustration, persistence, and more. Teaching is the best because there is enormous satisfaction to be had from working with students to develop good habits, build confidence, and use their own minds and abilities to learn, to achieve, to excel. And perhaps seeing them after they’re no longer your students and discovering that you’ve inspired them toward something they might not have imagined while sitting in your classroom. There is nothing like it.

“If teaching is so great, how come you didn’t stay in the classroom or return to it before you retired?” I left the classroom because of an appealing opportunity based on the work I got to do and the people with whom I got to work. Even though circumstances changed over time and the work became an unfulfilling grind, I don’t regret the decision to leave the classroom. I sometimes engaged in self-loathing and perhaps despair, but I also fought the good fight in the face of madness. And after 12 years away from the classroom, I didn’t believe I could work myself back into proverbial “teaching shape” to handle the day-to-day tasks that would appropriately serve a group of students. At least not enough to justify staying in the system, especially with the political nonsense that continues to happen in Texas. Nevertheless, as I look back, I can point to my time in the classroom as, perhaps, the most rewarding years of my career. I got to work with some remarkable students. I believe I became an excellent instructor of my subject, and I developed a strong rapport with my students – both were necessary for economics, where you’re teaching “the dismal science” as a graduation requirement to students who otherwise would not choose to be there. I got to teach other subjects, with similar reward. I remember teaching an elective class called “The Impact of Music on Society” in the days before the obsession with testing and labyrinthine accountability. I got to create the class and develop the curriculum from scratch, so I crafted something that took my music background and married it with my training in social studies subject matter. It was a popular class, and more challenging than some students expected. Perhaps the biggest reward came when I was selected for a teaching award by one of my students in that class – a top graduate – who talked about how the topics we covered in the course allowed her to make deeper personal connections with her parents and grandparents, over music. As a musician and a social studies teacher, it was eminently fulfilling. That was a very public recognition, but my favorite one was very private, a little over a decade ago. A former student was on-campus to pick up some documents and was visiting her high school teachers. She told me that my AP Macroeconomics class inspired her to get a Bachelor’s degree in economics, and she was next headed to law school and wanted to specialize in economic law. Talk about an overwhelming and rewarding moment. No politician, no mandate, no state assessment, no accountability framework created that moment. It happened because I worked to connect with my students, help them see things in the subject that mattered, and help them see things in themselves that also mattered. I had the honor of hearing first-hand that my work paid off. Thousands of teachers do the exact same thing as I did, every day; they’re doing it even as you read this. Hopefully they, too, may realize in no uncertain terms that the work they do in service to their students pays off handsomely in the future.

Here’s to teachers. And to teaching.

Above Audio Recorded Using:

• Microphone – Roswell Pro Audio Mini K87 High Output
• Interface – Audient iD4 mkii
• Hardware – MacBook Air M3 13″
• Software – TwistedWave for iOS
• Additional Software Treatment – AU HiPass, LoudMax, iZotope RX11 Mouth De-Click

Recorded in my Home Studio

Let me begin this post with what might sound like a controversial opinion: K-12 public education is just a job. Yes, it can be a deeply fulfilling one because of the lives an educator can impact. But it is not a vocation. It is not a calling. It is not, as a speaker at a conference I attended several years ago said, “driven by a sense of service and altruism.” At least, it shouldn’t be. You may feel called to teach, as a general principle, or to work with a specific age group or type of student, but you were not called specifically to K-12 public education. You were called to instruct, to unlock young minds, to impart knowledge and wisdom – but not to this specific profession or area. It’s simply where you get to practice your craft for an undervalued level of compensation. One of the best pieces of professional advice I ever received: “Just remember, there’s no loyalty in this business.” One of my friends, a teacher and tennis coach, imparted this bit of wisdom when we were colleagues during my first high school gig many years ago.

I don’t remember his exact words, but the general theme of that conversation was this: You are replaceable. They may praise you and call you valuable, but things can turn immediately. They decide they want you out for some reason, or they want someone else in your position, and you’ll find yourself moving on, like it or not. Years later, this person found himself honored by the district in its athletic hall of honor for his work as a coach. He graciously accepted the gesture, but I imagine he still remembered occasions when he may have felt unappreciated. Perhaps time has softened those memories; I don’t know. What I do know is 1) he was absolutely right, and 2) there’s really nothing wrong with a lack of loyalty.

Why do we value professional loyalty in the first place? My theory is that society was conditioned for this during the 20th century: Study hard, sign on with an employer, work hard, and you may well be with that same employer for your entire career. You’ll receive promotions and move up in the company until you reach whatever plateau is your professional destiny. Maybe they’ll relocate you at times, but you’ll be a “company man” (or woman) because you’ve worked so hard and given so much for them, and they reciprocate. The dynamics of job growth and changes occurred within the relatively safe cocoon of a single, long-term employer.

Historically, we view public schools in the same way. Look around at the local elementary schools around you. It’s likely that many of them are named for so-called “pillars” of the district — people who served the local community in the same place, albeit possibly in different roles, over decades, and the district named a campus after this person. We like to reward long-time educators who are our best. We also make it difficult to remove any educator who is mediocre or even bad. Once a given teacher has 3 years of experience, it’s incredibly difficult to fire them —districts have to document problems clearly, set up growth plans, and create a path for dismissal over time to remove a teacher. For administrators, there’s more performance incentive and less protection; they work on a year-by-year basis, so the path to removal is much easier for principals and other admin if they underperform. 

But it’s not the 20th century anymore. Careers in general experience more change over less time. Whichever path an educator chooses, there’s always an exit ramp, and in the 21st century, that ramp is used more frequently. My take on things is that there is nothing wrong with this lack of loyalty, particularly on the part of the educator. Are there situations where a teacher may be “unfairly targeted” by a principal who documents every little thing and makes his/her life miserable for a few years in an effort toward removal? Absolutely. Are these situations rampant? Absolutely not. In my experience, administrators don’t have the time to target anyone capriciously. If you’re a teacher on a growth plan, you’re somewhere between mediocre and a full-on problem, and they’re ready, even desperate, to move on from you.

At the administrative level, things honestly get even crazier. Fact: Anyone with “Superintendent” in his/her title, whether as an Assistant, Associate, Deputy, or the head honcho, is as much a politician as an educator. Lots of other central administrators also have political realities embedded in the job. Politics are fickle; the politics of K-12 public education, even more so. Even the most committed, well-meaning educator moving to upper administration could be unfairly affected by the political shifts in a district. It is cruel, but it is reality. And the best administrators I’ve ever known were all deftly able to navigate the political waters while still maintaining a focus on making educationally sound decisions in their work. It is not any easy balance to achieve.

Fact #2: This proverbial street (Loyalty Lane is a terrible pun, but it works) goes both ways. If you’re a teacher, of course you should care about your students and do your best to serve them. That’s the job. But at the end of the day, week, month, six weeks, semester, or year, you owe them nothing. Your personal loyalty is to the important people in your life – spouse, family, friends, etc. That’s it. If your campus or district is moving in a direction you cannot abide, make no apologies for seeking opportunity elsewhere. If another opportunity arises unexpectedly, do what is best for you and your family. Even if it’s best to leave the profession and you have that chance, take it. No apologies.

What if you’re an administrator? In the “era of accountability,” where your job performance may be dictated and judged by a (stupid) A-F letter grade in a politicized, oversimplified system that is changed every 5 years by law, you have minimal incentive to stay where you are and “fight the good fight” for a campus, district, or community. The politics of educational administration basically require you to preach all the latest buzzwords to teachers, parents, and community alike — about being a “servant leader,” about climate and culture, about academic rigor, about parent and community engagement, about school improvement. Something new will always come along. Preach those words as needed. Heck, believe them, and do your best to fulfill those lofty concepts. But make no apologies for also leveraging those terms and concepts to your next promotion. Your loyalty is to the most important people in your life, not to a campus or district. Beyond doing your best in the here-and-now of your job, you owe them nothing. Maybe you’re content with where you are, and they’re happy with you, but things can turn in what feels like an instant. You could be blindsided and suddenly feel like you’re being forced out.

“Gosh, what a sad perspective on the system.” I am keenly aware of this, but it is a perspective on the system, not the profession. As a naive college student who wanted to teach because he was interested in the learning process itself and in helping students grasp abstract themes and concepts in social studies, I had an idealized view because I did, indeed, view teaching as my true calling. (In many ways, I still do.) I saw myself in the classroom for 30+ years, possibly in the same campus. Then I met with reality, and it was…nuanced. I was moved among different subjects and campuses against my preferences. I dutifully adapted to the changes because that was the job. I also received promises that were ultimately not kept. I dealt with those the best I could. I ultimately learned that I was a proverbial cog in the system, serving the needs of the campus or district when it suited those in control. But I also learned that my calling to teach was simply something that overlapped with the K-12 public education system, though not always 100%. And I learned to take control of my own destiny within that system – switching campuses by choice, going after a promotion, eventually switching districts (twice), and finally, retiring on my own terms. My loyalty remained to myself and my family, and I did what was best for us. Things didn’t always go as planned, and it was never perfect. But I am satisfied with where I am at this moment. At my core, I remain a teacher, but where and how I teach is my choice now. And the 21st century affords me opportunities that are not confined to a bureaucratic system. K-12 public education was my career for 31 years. But in the end, it was just a job.