More Than Numbers

Note-I’ve decided to post this reflective essay I wrote two years ago in response to the new evaluation process used to rank teachers in school districts around the state.  As we head into our final evaluations, a spring tradition, we must always remember we are “more!”

Today I am 3.57. Last year I was 3.72.  This sudden, inexplicable fall from grace has shaken my confidence and made me question my choice to teach.  My fellow teachers will understand. The process of evaluating teachers has evolved to this complicated system which in the end reduces your overall job performance to a single number.  The scale is a 4 point scale, so it could most easily be compared to a grade point average.  Under this new system, teachers in Michigan are turning into numbers all around us and ranked in order- numerical order.

And I am becoming 3.57, an odd number, only 4/100th away from a proud 3.61.   This magic number is the cut-off for being tagged “highly effective.”  So, I’ve been this number for a little over 6 hours now and I can already feel it changing me.   I sense its importance; it is so precise.  It has to be “the right answer.”  Who could argue with such an exact figure?  And they say numbers don’t lie, right?  But this 3.57, I think it’s telling a whopper about me.  It says I’m no longer a highly effective teacher.  That number whispers in my ear, “You’re not who you think you are.”  And for the moment I listen.

I started teaching in the fall of 1992, and I was so in love with being a 6th grade teacher,  I would’ve worked for food and those sweet little notes students often write.  Teaching has never been a job; it is my calling.  There is nowhere I am more comfortable in all the world than in front of a classroom full of kids.  There is no place more alive and dynamic.  I belong right there.  My mom always says how lucky I am to have found my true niche at such a young age.  She says there are people who search their whole lives for their purpose and place.  I know she’s right .  That said, I’ve had plenty of other struggles, but it was the teaching that always saved me.  Because I knew I was good.  This knowing has made all the difference.  My gifts as a teacher have defined me.

But today I have a new definition and it is a number.  How ironic that my life’s work as an English teacher is being reduced to a mathematical formula.  Today I add up to 3.57, but I don’t trust that answer.  I think it’s a lie because my value and worthiness as a teacher cannot be figured out like a story problem.  My effectiveness as a teacher can only be discerned by looking out at the faces of my students.  So, please don’t be offended if I stop paying attention to the numbers because I’d rather look out at my charges.  Their eyes reflect the teacher I know I am.  They tell me everyday without numbers and sometimes even without words that I am more.   More than what education has been reduced to in this era of data and conformity.