One Year Out

My friend, still in the profession, wants my thoughts about what it is like being a retired teacher. He is anticipating retirement in a little over a year from now. 

A little background first. I was a teacher for 29 years. I started in a Catholic High School. I was endorsed by the State of Michigan to teach English, art, and social studies. After a 3.5 year stint in the Catholic School, located in Dearborn, Michigan, I got a job in the Dearborn Public Schools -- specifically Fordson High School, where I taught English and art. Then, due to my disappointment with the district over its salary schedule, settled upon by negotiations between the district and a corrupt union, I managed to leave Dearborn by getting a job in the Midland Public Schools, where the salary was acceptable and where I worked for the next 24 years, from August 1988 until June 2012. For the first seven years in Midland, I taught in an alternative school for at-risk students. After that, I taught for two years in a middle school before settling in for the remainder of my career at H. H. Dow High School, from 1997 until June 2012.

My first thought one year out is personal astonishment at having put up with the profession for as long as I did. Check that, I don't see it as a profession. A teacher is a minion, a slave, a deliverer of programs set by autocrats called administrators and school board members. There is a certain amount of lip service given to nurturing critical thinking capacities in that world, for students and among colleagues, but I assert that no such exists and is in fact discouraged, even punished.

My overarching thought these days is that I feel like Andy DuFresne. I escaped from an institution that is uncomfortably similar to a penitentiary.