EDUCATION:
A View from Inside
PART I It has been several years since I retired, and I still have mixed emotions about my working years in the field of education. I feel that if I write down a brief history of my professional life, I may be able to have a better perspective of Education in general. Every time one reads the paper or listens to the news, invariably someone talks about “better schools,” “better teachers,” and the “need for more money for Education.” It seems that the consensus is that the more money put into the schools the better education you are going to get. I don’t feel that it is necessarily one hundred percent true. Surely, more money will help, but it is not the cure for all the ills that are present in the field of education at this time. Very often talking about teachers, people will say that they went into the profession only because they were not able to find any other job. As in any other field you will find a wide range of reasons why people go into this field, and so is the type of person that goes into the teaching profession. There are dedicated people who want to change the world, people who take it as a job, people who work very hard at it; and others that put in the minimum effort to get by. As I will explain later on, the end results derive mainly by the kind of supervision and direction they receive from their immediate supervisors.
While I was still in my senior year I did inquire about the possibility of going to graduate school and preparing myself for the teaching of languages at the college level. I was advised against it. They said that it would be a good choice for my background but finding a position would be close to impossible since there was almost no demand for it. Anyway at that time it didn’t seem to be a very challenging choice and wanted to explore all other possibilities in any other field I could get into. At that time New York City seemed to be the place that could offer unlimited choices, so I spent some time looking for a challenging job opening in that city. Unfortunately most of the jobs in the classified ads required previous experience or specialized training and the ones that did not require it, didn’t pay much or had a very large number of applicants for the available openings. After a while I was able to get a job in an import-export business and soon I found out that most of them were small agencies which employed clerical workers with no room at the top except for the person who owned it. Then I moved on into the banking business, and I found out that although the corporation was very large, there were very few possibilities to move on to the top and if so it required a lifetime. But the worst part of it, in addition to the low pay, were the tedious and repetitive activities that one had to perform day in and day out, without any chance of being creative, or being able to solve problems of any kind. You followed rules and routines to the letter. Frankly anybody could do it and a college education would have been a waste. At that time I realized that all my previous education and training would go to waste unless I went into a field in which I would be able to use them. I had gone through the toughest classical school in Europe whose curriculum, from the sixth year on required the study of the native language for eight years, a modern language for two, Latin for eight, classical Greek for five, World History for five, Philosophy for two, along with Math, Chemistry, Physics, History of the Arts and other minor subjects.
After the test I was informed that I met the requirements as a teacher of foreign languages. I remember that one of my problems had been the pronunciation of the “I”, and one of the words mispronounced was “circus”. The lady who gave the test told me that it was possible to eliminate the accent, and she was willing to give me lessons at the rate of six dollars each lesson. I told her I was going to look into it, but since I had no time and no money I postponed the issue to a later date.
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In my case, I came to the decision to go into the profession by simply
comparing it with all other jobs available to me at that time. I must confess
that it wasn’t easy for me to be accepted in some positions because of my slight accent, but I managed to explore several fields. One thing that
annoyed me to no end was the fact that the counselors in college always
recommended a curriculum in Liberal Arts, claiming that most of the
companies preferred to train their own employees in their related activities
and would hire only those students who had a background in Humanities
rather that those with one restricted to a specific field. It did make sense
at the time, so I majored in Political Science with Italian and Russian as
minors. To my great surprise and disappointment when I went out for
job interviews the first thing they would ask was if I had any accounting
or business administration background and if I could type. Frankly I felt
a little betrayed by the counselors thinking that they either did not know
what they were doing or didn’t care to really help the students the best
possible way. I really can’t understand why colleges, industries and business
cannot come up with some projections for future job openings that would
be available in future years according to their needs and give students a
better view for future job openings, so they could prepare themselves for
future career according to their talents and best abilities.
At that time The City College of New York was offering the “Fifth
Year Program” with free tuition for those people who intended to make
teaching a career. I applied for it, and after work I was taking courses at the
uptown campus. At the same time I went to the administration building
of the Board of Education which was located at 110 Livingston Street, in
Brooklyn. The information desk sent me to a room on the fourth floor to
see a certain person. I went to that room, the door was wide open and a
little old lady was busy with some papers. She glanced at me and without
saying anything kept on going about her business. I didn’t say anything,
and I leaned against the door waiting for her to finish what she was doing.
After a while, she turned, looked at me and asked what did I want. I told
her I was inquiring about the prerequisites and the possibilities of getting
a teaching job in the city. “You want to be a teacher and here you are
standing with your hands in the pocket and leaning against the doorway?
Tell me, is that the proper attitude for a person who wants to become a
teacher?” I stood there in a state of shock trying to decide if I should turn
around and leave or stay and get the information that I needed. At this
point too much was at stake, and I wouldn’t let such remarks bother me. I
had been in the military service and been treated worse than that on many
occasions. I apologized and asked the lady if there were any openings in
the city’s schools for a social studies teacher. Her reply was: “Social studies
teachers are a dime a dozen, and with your accent you will never get a
job in the city. But there is a critical shortage of language teachers and I
would suggest you look into it.” As I expected there were no openings for
teacher of Italian, but they were desperate for teachers of Spanish. Since
I had taken few courses in Spanish and practiced it while I was in Texas,
and since it was my last resort, I decided to go for it. Before I could fill an
application I had to go to a speech therapist to make sure that my English
pronunciation met the requirements of the Board of Education for the
City of New York.
During the summer I was notified that I would be assigned to a junior
high school in Flushing, Queens. I gave notice to my employer who was
not expecting my departure, and with promises of doubling my salary was
hoping that I would change my mind. He was really in a difficult situation
trying to replace me because of my bilingual skills. I felt bad leaving the job so abruptly, so I gave in
and I decided to stay long enough to train someone else for my position. This process took so long and I had to notify the board
that I would be unable to begin in September and asked to give me an
assignment for the following year. Early in the spring I finally walked away
from my job, but at that time there were no openings in any school so I was
advised to get on the list of the daily substitutes for the Manhattan Junior
High Schools. Early in the morning or the night before, a school would
call me and I went in to cover for an absent teacher. In many instances the
coverage was not in my field and being new at this job the task was very
difficult, unless the absent teacher had left very specific instructions and
lesson plans. Each school was different from the others. The best working
conditions were when the AP would escort me to the classroom, introduce
me to the students and worn them not go take advantage of the substitute
and complete the work assigned. And may times during the day he would
come in and check to see that everything was under control. Under those
conditions the day would go on without incidents, the students did the
work and I had a very satisfying day. In some other school, I was handed
the keys to a classroom and in many cases I would not even have the class
roll. I would have to pass around a sign-in sheet, and in many instances the
students would enter a fake name so they wouldn’t get in trouble in case
at the end of the day I reported them for discipline infraction. In that case
the day was generally very difficult and sometimes it made me reconsider
the idea of going into teaching. Naturally after a while I would not accept
going to these schools that seemed to have a very poor organization and
a very poor support from the administrators.
