This post is not the one I was going to write. In fact, it's not the one I had already written for today. I was up last night trying to figure out how to characterize what I'm hoping to do here. What am I talking about? I'm talking about what you need to do, what I needed to do, in order to put together a healthy, sustainable career in teaching. 

I think of the challenges as falling into two basic categories. First is the classroom. That's students and curriculum. It includes things from planning to classroom management to how do you grade all those freakin' papers? That's a hard part of the job and it's not getting any easier. However, for me, it was the other stuff that made me check my retirement account every other week.

If you are a teacher (or maybe some other kind of education professional--I'll get to more of that later) and you are feeling overwhelmed and frustrated in your job, it's very likely nothing to do with the kids. Or at least, not only or even primarily the kids. It's more likely to be a deplorable colleague, or out-of-classroom personnel whose job seems to be to give you extra work. Or it might be an incompetent or malicious administrator. Or you might be stymied by the abrupt and absurd demands of district administrators cosplaying as educators. 

During my career, these were the impedimenta vocationis (Google translate) that were the constant fuel for my retirement fantasies. The kids were the least of the problems. The truth is, they are the only reason to be there.

So what I'm talking about is this: For the classroom stuff there are lots of great places to get checklists and advice on how to set up your room and what to do about disruptive students--and we'll talk about some of that stuff here. But my main focus, and the reason I wrote Answer Key: A Teacher’s Completely Unofficial, Fiercely Unauthorized Handbook and Survival Guide, is to discuss and address the stuff that doesn't get talked about as much and for which there aren't checklists or "Ten Things" answers. Maybe it's because these feel like enormous, systemic problems with solutions--if there are any--far beyond the reach of mortal teachers. We have our hands full just getting through each minute of each day. 

Still, these are the things that drive a lot of good and potentially good teachers out of the business. I saw it happen and it nearly happened to me. So what do we do? What can we do? One thing I'm certain of: The impetus for change will not come from those who profit from the status quo. Power concedes nothing without a demand (Frederick Douglass, of course). Who will make the demand? 

It must be teachers. If not us, then who? Sure, let's recruit all the allies we can, but the movement--real movement--will have to start with teachers. And students? Now that's an idea...

That's what I'm talking about in Answer Key. How do we resist the education-industrial complex and its binary "data"-driven business model? How do teachers push back hard enough to reshape the system without making the bosses mad enough to bump us off?  (h/t John Huston The Maltese Falcon) I don't know. I don't know if it's possible to change the world. 

But from my own experience I do know this: It is absolutely possible to do the right thing and push back--a lot--against bad ideas and the people who peddle them. It's possible to do that AND sustain a long, profoundly rewarding career while staying sane and being kind. And it's possible to do all that and still wake up one day smack dab in the middle of a fabulous, glorious, magnificent retirement. Ready to stir shit up.

You can. Do it.