There was a time, not so long ago, when I asked my high school classes how many planned to go into teaching. One or two hands shot up in a class of 55. Most of my students snickered and mumbled something about wanting a real job that earned real money. A class humorist piped up, “It’s too hard to teach someone like me!”
But since that time, teaching has grown in appeal. Even in years when schools downsize, they try very hard to keep current employees and only retire positions that have become vacant because of a move or retirement. Additionally, Fairfax County and many other school districts have pension plans that are “defined” and not subject to the vagaries of the market.
Right now, if given a choice to be a teacher or Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JP Morgan Chase, you would choose the former, right? Teaching is always humbling, so we don’t need an economic collapse to be reminded that we are not masters of the universe. Most teachers try to maintain both humility and dignity at all times, and that’s how we are able to stay in the profession for decades. Because we recognize our limitations, teachers create less resentment than do bankers, and are perhaps even more effective — at least on an individual level.
The poet who best captures this paradox of humility and power is Edwin Romond. In his collection of poems, “Dream Teaching,” the title poem begins:
I am first in line for coffee
and the copier is not broken yet.
This is how dreams begin in teaching high school.
The teacher walks into first period, and every student is on time, a miraculous event that is reinforced with other miracles right up to the end of the day, when Crusher Granorski screams, “Predicate nominatives are awesome!” The teacher drives home, “petting my plan book.”
Yes, this is a dream, and yet it’s not. Romond’s message is that for 32 years he has battled broken copiers and late students and those who hate grammar, yet there are sparks: “The one with live eyes/who’d stay after class to ask one more question” and the “one who met Whitman’s verse and began to make poems of his own.”
All teachers have those students who make it all worthwhile — despite early start times, bureaucratic administrators and the occasional unruly class. Somehow, those rare sparks light the way.
Does Jamie Dimon have those sparks in his job? Maybe he does. But will he, at retirement, be able to say with Romond:
Like book marks in a story
to be continued, I leave behind
my hunger for a different life,
my longing to do it all again.
Romond reflects my sentiment precisely, and the sentiment of all teachers who have stayed in the profession for decades. None of us would trade places with Jamie Dimon, regardless of his big paycheck. If you are looking for a profession that, ultimately, has no regrets — choose teaching. It may not make you rich or a poet, but it will make you long “to do it all again.”
Erica Jacobs, whose column appears Wednesday, teaches at George Mason University. E-mail her at [email protected].
