In Which I Lost My Cool

There's a professor at our school. I don't want to use his name, so let's call him Professor McDrunkerson. This teacher is, as you have probably guessed, always drunk. He has a serious problem with alcohol, to the point where his wife and child left him since he was no longer buying food for the family -- instead he spends it all on liquor. He regularly skips most or all of his classes -- we're about halfway through the trimester, and I've seen him at school maybe three times. On the days when he is in class, he saunters into class smelling of gin, scrawls something illegible on the board, tells the students to copy it, and puts his head down on the desk and naps the rest of the time. No explanation, nothing. At the end of the trimester, he completely makes up the grades -- a 10 is a passing grade here, and if you look at his grade sheet, it goes like this: "10, 10, 10, 11, 10, 10, 9, 10, 10, 10, 12, 11". No student, even the incredibly smart ones that have 18's and 19's in all their other classes, scores higher than a 12. But at the end of the trimester, 90% of his students passed Portuguese, and that's apparently all that counts.

We had a staff meeting on Friday morning. I don't teach on Fridays and I was anxious to get into the city to meet Szasha, but I decided to stick around for this meeting in case it was important.

"We have a very big problem," my director said after everyone sat down. "The pass rate for our students went down last trimester. First trimester, 82% of our students passed. But last trimester, only 74% passed. This is unacceptable. Let's talk about what we can do to raise this percentage. First, I'd like to hear your opinions -- why is this happening?"

Several of the teachers piped up with ideas.

• It's harvest time, and a lot of students are missing school.
• When students do show up, they come late and they leave early.
• We have no books to use in the classroom. 
• We're getting into more difficult material and students don't know how to study effectively.
• Many of the students that come from the feeder schools in the mato (the bush) still don't know how to read and write in 8th grade.

These are all very real concerns for the teachers at my school, and yet my director brushed them aside and said, "These are challenges that we all face, and yet some teachers are doing better than others. What can we do to make the teachers that are behind improve their pass rates?"

Now, I'd like to state at this point that I'm incredibly lucky to have colleagues that actually work -- many of the horror stories that I hear from other volunteers would never happen here. Generally, most teachers here show up to school every day, and they actually teach. Some of them even teach well.  These are the ones that give tests that actually test what was learned in class. These are the teachers, of course, whose pass rate accurately reflects student knowledge and achievement.

Then my director started reading a list of each teacher and their pass rate, starting from lowest and going to highest, and guess who had the highest pass rate? With 90%, it was Professor McDrunkerson. I felt a communal shift in atmosphere to what I would call "incredibly pissed off." (Three guesses as to who was the only professor absent from this meeting?) And yet, no one was saying anything! What's wrong with them? I thought. Why don't they stick up for themselves? This is ridiculous! 

Then I though back to a time when I was working for just over minimum wage for a boss that just loved to yell at people who didn't deserve it, and I understood why these people were staying silent. This job is these people's livelihood. Mouthing off to the boss could get you fired, and then where's the food for your family going to come from?

Unlike colleagues, though, I don't depend on this school for my salary. Heck, I don't get a salary. So I raised my hand.

"Excuse me," I said, "But let me see if I have this straight. The thing that's worrying you is our pass rate, yes?"

"Yes," said the director.

"OK. But let me ask you, what is this statistic really showing us? You're saying that the teachers with the lowest pass rate are the worst teachers and the ones with the highest are the best?"

"Yes."

"All right, well, I have several objections to that. First of all, I know for a fact that some of the teachers with low pass rates are excellent teachers. Secondly, are you seriously trying to tell us that you think the best teacher in the Secondary School -- the best our of all of our teachers, is Professor McDrunkerson!?"

A stunned silence followed my outburst. "Did she really just say that?" whispered a few teachers.

And then the room exploded. People were laughing, shouting "Yeah!" and "Exactly!" and a couple of them reached over to give me a high-five and shake my hand. My director looked most seriously displeased.

I very rarely speak during these types of staff meetings. I also very rarely raise my voice in general. I don't like being the center of attention, and my hands were shaking a bit when I sat down. And yet, I'm glad I said something. I've been in these teachers' shoes, completely at the mercy of a tyrannical supervisor, and it's not at all fun.

At the moment, my relationship with my director is a bit strained, but it'll pass. He's gone for the weekend, but I plan on going to talk to him on Monday, and tell him this: If you want to have a staff meeting about how we can improve the quality of our students learning, I'll be there, supporting you 100%. But I will not stand by and listen to the very teachers who are actually doing their jobs get berated. Let's focus less on statistics and focus more on what's behind those numbers.

The one bridge I think I've permanently burned is with Professor McDrunkerson. But on a scale of one to one hundred, you know how much I care about that?

Zero.