And guess what? While one can earn a certificate in teaching Science or PE or Spanish or Music or Art, there's (still) no credential for teaching Theater Arts. One needs an English certificate (??) to qualify as Drama teacher.
My quandary was quickly answered when I was hired, weeks after I arrived stateside, at an independent (i.e. private) K-8 school in San Jose. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and so did the kids. The following year I got the opportunity to move to a 7-12 (soon to be 6-12) school in Palo Alto that was an even better fit.
Teachers at high-end private schools receive enviable perks and, it seemed, freedom to be truly responsive and innovative in creating curriculum. I thrived, more from the freedom than from the perks. It was all about my students, learning from year to year how to improve my courses and develop new classes that these young people would find relevant and interesting.
We got a hot lunch every day. A great health plan. And even a sabbatical after, in my case, eleven years of service. But no tenure. Never tenure. This lack of any job security did not concern me. Every spring for twenty years, when I was offered another contract, the Head of School would write a remarkable string of superlatives in a personal note at the bottom of the cover letter. The fact that I often got to work with my students for five or six of their seven years at the school had me feeling especially bonded with my school.
There's controversy in California now, as a recent court decision is calling into question the granting of tenure to public school teachers. But at private schools, the ability of the school's leader, the Head, to dismiss any employee for any reason at any time is baked into our contracts.
And there's the rub. As long as a Head of School has free and unrestrained ability to fire anyone for any reason, without Board oversight, every employee is at the mercy of that one person.
Unlike all the faculty, a Head is hired without necessarily having ever demonstrated leadership capacity or people skills. The Board makes the call, and most times, I'm glad to say, they choose well, looking out for the long-range health and welfare of the institution.
Over time, the Board becomes more and more a reflection of the tastes and proclivities of the Head. While faculty are constantly being evaluated for their performance, the Head can go for years and years without any formal scrutiny.
So what happens when a Head goes from learning the ropes to pulling all the strings? Especially, what happens when this administrator is granted an annual salary that is five times the average pay of the faculty?
I have known many excellent school leaders, people who know how to listen, who are interested in the lives of the students and faculty and staff. These leaders mean it when they hand write "We couldn't be the school we are without you!" year after year on a teacher's contract. Their doors are open to all their constituents -- parents, students, and employees. They are administrators to minister to the individuals they serve, with as goal that each worker and each student can do their best work and join in supporting the institution.
We humans so often become headstrong and dull when granted too much money & power and not enough true responsibility. Especially in the U.S. of A., the 'might makes right' mentality pervades.
And so, in her 18th and my 21st year of service, the year she was to step down as Head, no matter that all of her colleagues (read: underlings) were openly champing at the bit for her departure, huge festivities were in the works to celebrate her glorious years at the helm. At least I was spared that spectacle.
This Head, in my opinion and from my experience, was an uptight prude with zero people skills. Her staff feared her. She rushed to judgment and would not stand for a word of dissent. Perhaps, because I had always made it a practice to speak truth to power (and even pitifully imagined that this was a good thing to do), I was expecting that my colleagues would do the same. A number of them tried. But we were all in the same boat. The Red Queen obviously thought that "Off with his head!" was an adequate response when she disagreed with a colleague.
I'm pretty much recovered from the worst of it all. Getting suddenly kicked out of the community I had loved and nurtured for over two decades was a serious trauma. But the love and support that flowed to me was and is phenomenal. I am mighty grateful.
I am writing this post as a wake-up call to anyone else who might benefit from reading my story. She fired me without first consulting with anyone. She banished me because I had the temerity to show an unrated, Oscar-nominated short film to my freshmen students that showed a (gasp!) naked woman to these girls. She was hysterical about this movie. She said that were she to show this film to a group of adults she'd be liable to get sued for screening pornography. Off the wall. And drunk with power. Her last big decision to cap off her years at the school was to rid the place of one of its most beloved teachers.
Without tenure and with a system wherein one person can end another's teaching career with a wave of her titanium wand, there is no academic freedom.
So I'm still looking.
Oh, give me a home where the Buffalo roam
Where the Deer and the Antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the sky is not cloudy all day.