An Interview with an Education Worker

FW Gale interviews education worker FW Quibs.

What’s your work background?

Arts, retail, and swimming until 2018, when I switched to teaching in a school rather than in a pool. I left the pool and trained to become a Montessori teacher.

How did you get into teaching?

My family is full of teachers. Out of the seven of us, five are in teaching in some form, including my mom. It has always been clear I am really good with children and was constantly put into situations where I would be a babysitter or helper. However, I’ve also always been a bit rebellious — I vowed that I would never be a teacher like the rest of my family and that others couldn’t determine my profession based on their perception of my skills. It also didn’t help that I have a lot of religious and education trauma from the eight years I spent in religious schools, in particular from 5th-8th grade.

Did your experiences as a student impact this decision to not teach?

My idea of a teacher was someone who dictated or regurgitated information and facts while not caring about the children. I never had a sense I had a teacher who cared about me as a person, maybe a small handful that got close to my idea of a teacher.

How did these experiences define how you teach now?

I strive to be a role model for kids, an amazing humanitarian, a human the kids want to be. If you talk about peace, humanitarian issues, and gardening. . . kids will join in. To be a teacher I needed to find and live my own personal values before being available to be a guide. But I’m still working on this, and learning as I find pressure points on my values, and will continue to evaluate them for the rest of my life.

Any bad bosses?

My first Head of School as a teacher was an awful experience for me. It was not the person that hired me; this was an interim Head because the school was not able to hire anyone before the school year began. This person did not have a background in Montessori (which I had been fresh out of my training for and for which the school is accredited).

They did not offer any support to me as a new teacher; they placed me on what was referred to as “probation” only to take me off of it just as schools shut down for the pandemic. I barely worked with the admins during remote learning, nor with other teachers including those within my department. The icing on the cake was the day after the last day of school, they let me know that my classroom would not be filled the next year due to the pandemic and they were letting me go. I already knew at that point the other class was getting a new teacher fresh out of training.

How did you feel?

The whole experience sucked. There were many conversations that included a version of “I don’t know exactly how Montessori works, so you will have to help me with that” during meetings about my productivity as a teacher. There were many promises made to me and requests from me for support because I was a new teacher, but all that happened were meetings about their perception of my “poor productivity.”

You recently organized a Zinn Truth Day, why?

It upsets me that people feel they can police education without fully understanding (or at least minimum reading) what they are regulating or asking to be regulated.

I was raised to be curious, but I was also raised in a state that bans the most books and has pretty strict regulations on education. It took effort for me to find history that includes all of the people involved. I got into education to give the next generation a chance to hear the full truth and be able to have the space to speak theirs.

How did it go?

A success, because we gathered and discussed truths. It wasn’t the turnout I had hoped for, but it was a great opportunity for a group of people to gather together and discuss literature, science, and ideologies. It felt more like a catalyst for more opportunities for action in the realm of education and community.

Do you have insights to share from organizing an event like that?

I feel like this is a unique event in that one person can “host” a Zinn Teach Truth Day event. The whole concept of the project is that accurate history, the people’s history, is available and being consumed. A single person reading a book about the history of North America is participating in the event. Having even one more person to chat with about history that is gained from reading is great and amazing.

I feel it’s really important to take a moment to define what the purpose of the event is and how it aligns with your values, whether that is as an organization or an individual. Doing that at the beginning stages of a project helps to be able to have a productive reflection on how the event actually went. Did we have 100 people attend? No, but that wasn’t the purpose of the event. Did we discuss history? Yes, and that turned into a few starting a book club. I call that a success.

Any future plans?

Helping families feel more comfortable with the education of their children. I am offering tutoring and consultation services with an emphasis on homeschool environments where the family unit participates more in each child’s education. I’m also working on community organizing events for youth and LGBTQ+ both young and old.

Was education important for your work?

Education has always been important to my work as a human being on this earth. I have always wanted to help people feel successful. I also have an intense thirst for knowledge. I get to partner the two in education. Children feel successful when they know what is going on in their world: in science, arts, language, geometry, and of the self. I like going on the journey with them.

Who’s your employer now?

Me! I am working as a contractor, so in a way I employ myself.

Exciting, how do you feel?

Usually I like myself. The work is great because I chose it. Everyone I work for is in collaboration, there is no hierarchy. It feels very freeing.

Why did you choose this path?

It felt like the right move after working in schools for a few years, watching my mom and siblings teach in schools, and being a product of the current education system. I’ve had a lot of time to evaluate my values as a person and my values as an educator. It doesn’t usually align with most school systems. Yet somehow, it does align with parents. That disconnect makes me feel like I am more of a value to society following an alternative path.

How is your workplace structured?

I choose my schedule. However, because this is freelance I may have times like right now, where I am hired out to teach at a summer camp for seven hours, then do an hour of tutoring immediately after every day. On the other end of that scale, I have days that no one has signed up for my services or hired me out for a longer gig. I try to take advantage of those days by doing prep work and making materials.

When I was in a classroom, I was expected to be at school a half-hour to an hour before the children. I might get a 45 minute break, and could leave as early as 3:15pm on non-meeting/event days. Meeting days meant staying an extra hour or two. Events could be up to 4 hours. Every school has offered some weekly prep time during the school hours, but that was often eaten by meetings with parents and admin. Prep time often occurred at home, technically off hours because teachers get paid salary.

How’s the pay?

Still trying to figure that out, to be honest. I make or negotiate my rate. When I’m busy, the current rate that I have set myself at feels livable and that is fine with me. However, when I’m not busy I get worried about being able to feed my spouse and myself.

When I was in a classroom: awful. Teachers don’t get paid enough. Small private schools can’t afford or find value in good health insurance, so they offer benefit packages instead. My favorite is that the reason behind the lack of health insurance is because most teachers are supposed to have a spouse that has a job with better insurance. Which goes along with the idea that teachers don’t need to be paid more because their husbands make all the money. Directly opposite from the original idea of teachers: the women in the community that couldn’t bear children nor had husbands and were forced to educate the youth. The education system is entirely flawed is all I’m saying. There is also a flaw in how the salary is structured. It is technically only around 180 days of paid work. We are really paid part-time hours for full time labor. But we get summer break, so we can have different jobs and never have time to do any of the prep work we said we would. Thus getting burnt out really, really early in the year.

Education is Industrial Union 620. What kind of power would more solidarity bring to your industry?

So much! It’s not just about getting paid more. Most teachers can’t survive (with all that society says we should) on their salary alone. So more money would just mean teachers can survive and would have health benefits. They need support. They need to know that their admin and government is backing education that helps children thrive. That includes accurate history, civil rights, skills in practical life (modern to the times and location), grace and courtesy. There is so much more to education than reading and arithmetic. It’s exhausting playing so many hats. It’s not just that educational workers need solidarity, they need collaboration with other units that also have solidarity.

Have you been able to use solidarity unionism to improve your workplace?

Prior to leaving my last school, I was more vocal about my values and politics. We weren’t in need of anything other than openness. The staff there just needed to know that they could speak to one another and that at least one person would listen. They are on a journey to clarify language that is cohesive amongst the school. I might have shown where some of those flaws in language already exist, either on purpose by blatantly questioning things in meetings, or by accident when there were miscommunications.