Great Kills Review

Winter 2008 – Volume II, issue 1

Jonathan Fishbein

The Standard: An Introduction

From the accounts of a Brooklyn, NY high school English teacher who quit the teaching profession after his first year, returned three months later, then left for the suburbs after his fourth year - only to return to the same Brooklyn high school he tried to “escape” and subsequently embrace as the only place he belongs.

I am an English teacher in New York City – specifically, Brooklyn and of all the statistics that track the attrition rate of people in my position, none can account for the decisions I have made. The number of teachers who leave the profession by their fifth year is alarming – and what about the teacher who quits at the end of his first year, only to return to the profession three months later? Then leave New York City for a suburban school district after year four – find the suburbs quite the opposite of what he’d expected, then returned to the Brooklyn inner city? That’s me.

In this series of “essays” I will examine the position into which I’ve put myself – right back into the school that many have wanted to escape, myself included more than once. Even though by most accounts I should never have returned, those accounts are often based on factors that I neither consider nor acknowledge as valid. I can’t seem to leave this place and have grown not only to accept this but also to embrace it.

I asked for it at an early age. I remember the first time I told my parents that I wanted to be a teacher. I was in the sixth grade. I might have wanted to do it because I looked up at my teachers and for the most part, saw adults as majestic characters, commanding respect, demanding results, and mostly getting both. I soon learned that having the title of “teacher” does not mean that one will automatically earn either respect or results. Making things more complicated was the assignment to teach in an inner-city high school where, quite frankly, students arrive having been treated like garbage for a full eight years.

I have a lot to say about my students – about how they often beat unimaginable odds. How they often have more responsibilities than I had at 30. How they just don’t have time for bullshit. We think we don’t either, but they really, really don’t! And yet I feel no urge to write about them, though they might appear in some of these works. Instead, I am going to use this as an outlet to work through my impressions of some colleagues – the ones who were unable to “escape.”

This will not be my bitch-and-moan outlet, however much it might appear that way once you begin reading these installments. No. I am just going to have a try at the amazing and admirable skill that I continually find in abundance in my past and future students - I am going to be honest with you.

I am going to tell you about my days - about the incompetence I meet, the violence against myself and others, the spirit breaking attitude toward education and teachers held by our society, the policies enacted by educrats, and how all of these influence the reasons why I returned to my students and will never leave them again!

About the Author

Jonathan Fishbein is an English teacher at a Brooklyn high school. Even though he has left that job more than once, he loves it!

“The Standard: An Introduction” © 2008 by Jonathan Fishbein

*All rights reserved by the author – no work may be reprinted without the express consent of its author.

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