The other day I was telling a co-worker about my decision to leave work everyday at 3:00. She responded, "Oh, good; you have a family." It reminded me of another co-worker's comment about her own similar resolution not to bring home paperwork. She punctuated it with the verbal equivalent of a fist raised in solidarity: "Family first."
Yes! Good! Right? Family is important. Who could argue with that? I can't help feeling like we are aiming at something, but coming up just next to it instead of hitting it straight on. It's acceptable, even admirable, to limit your teacher overwork if you have a family.
Teachers who are also parents get a pass on unrealistic work demands, since their other caregiving duties might suffer. I say "parents" out of fairness, but clearly this is connected to our cultural expectations of mothers. It's hard to be both a "good" teacher and a "good" mother (as dictated by our society's implicit norms), so no one will fault you for putting motherhood first.
On the other side of that coin is the notion that the overwork our education system encourages should rest on the bowed backs of our colleagues who happen to be dependent-free. What we are missing is a true appreciation of each person's intrinsic worth. You don't just matter because you have family responsibilities. YOU MATTER. Period. Each one of us is a highly trained professional performing work that is vitally important to the future of our civilization. We deserve appropriate compensation for that work, and a work-life balance that is healthy and sustainable for as long as we choose to do it.
We teach our students (and our children) that they have worth, that they have something valuable to contribute, and that they shouldn't listen to anyone trying to tell them otherwise. It's time we listened to ourselves.
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