Culture shock

While driving towards Chicago, I tuned in to a radio talk show in which Karen Lewis, the new President of the Chicago Teacher's Union, was answering questions from listeners on the topic of tenure, among other things.

I've always been under the vague impression that tenure means it's somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible to fire a teacher that has it. And apparently some callers thought the same thing - someone called in with a complaint that her school can't get rid of "bad" teachers. Karen Lewis' answer to that was that tenure does not guarantee a teacher a job, but rather it guarantees a teacher the right to "due process" when being considered for termination. There wasn't much more explanation of the nature of tenure, about which I'm curious.

I suppose if I take a cynical view, I would expect the "due process" to which she referred to be defined in such a way that makes it practically impossible to fire a teacher. I don't know for sure, so I'm happy to defer that assessment. But even if I take a more benign view of "due process", I suppose I'm uncomfortable with the idea that teachers who are not tenured don't have access to "due process".

In industry, your qualifications are vetted through the interview process and then, if things go well, you're hired. Then your competence is vetted through job performance. If you do well, you flourish; if you don't do well, you're let go. The process is pretty much the same for everyone, whether they've been on the job for ten days or ten years. If the company leadership is strong, then this model seems to work pretty well.

I wonder why the same model shouldn't be applied to the teaching profession.

"We start, then, with nothing..."

Well, I've done it. For good or ill I've taken the first (rather large) step and relocated my family from the San Francisco Bay area to the suburbs of Chicago, where I grew up.

I'm in the rather luxurious position of working remotely for my current employer while I prepare for a career change. Continuity of employment and benefits eliminates a great source of stress for anyone uprooting a family, and I will always be grateful to my employer for the boost.

My plan is to work in my current position for the next year while also preparing to teach starting in the fall of 2011. I expect that I'll have to do two major things (and many minor things, of course): First, I'll have to figure out how to get certified. There are different paths to certification in Illinois, some conventional, some alternative. And I'll need to choose one that fits my plans. More on that as I discover new things about the process. Second, the part of my brain that once regularly solved physics problems has fallen into some disrepair and is in need of rehabilitation. I'll have to find an intellectual gym, too. And then there are the matters of finding a home, getting my kids into school, convincing my wife (a native Texan) not to leave me when the Chicago winter sets in...

In spite of these hurdles, it's difficult for me to express how excited I am about the prospect of my new career. I want so badly to begin that it's difficult to focus on all the other things I must do to make a living in the meantime - they seem so trivial in comparison.

It's an amazing and wonderful thing to find ones purpose.