A. I can't think of anything specific. There's a layer between
me and them, and that layer is (head) and (asst head), so -- I'm
trying to think. Were there things driven by the board that
I and others had to respond to? I'm not aware of any. There
might be some things and I'm just not aware of it. You know,
I might be doing some things which are driven by board
decisions and I just don't know it. I don't know.
Q. Looking over some minutes and there was mention of faculty
having responsibility for recruitment of students; is that
something that would come from the board or did that come from
the faculty or --
A. No, that's probably, and I'm just guessing here, but my guess
is that that's something that was a result of some committee,
either faculty committee working with XXX or XXX
working with board members or XXX/faculty/board members,
it's something like that, but I don't know what exactly for
that. But that probably, I'm almost sure it is, was not a
pure faculty-driven decision. At least it would be more
accurately a community decision of a small committee comprised
of faculty, board and administration; maybe parents, too.
Q. Is that something you do? How does one recruit?
A. Oh, I don't know. I thought you meant is working on a
committee like that something that I do. But there are
guidelines, there is plenty of papers, printouts and booklets
and stuff. They had consultants come in just recently, the
school had a consultant to come in to write a long-range plan,
part of which was strategies for recruiting students and
things like that, so they not only brainstorm, and I keep
saying "they" because I am not actively involved, those
committees actively brainstorm ideas. And along with that,
outside consultants --
Q. Does that influence at all, your work life or what you do as
part of your work?
A. Not that I'm aware of.
Q. Incident -- state or federal programs, regulations, mandates?
A. Well, not my day-to-day work life, not at all that I can think
of. My career work life, I had to know the (state name)
constitution to be certified, but --
Q. But did you need to be certified to get this job?
A. No, not here, but I bet most of the faculty here are
certified, but I got certified when I first came to Tucson and
I wasn't sure of where I was going to wind up working, but I
wanted to teach, so I was pursuing the private schools at that
time and also the public schools. Therefore, I wanted to be
certified.
Q. But for private you don't need to be?
A. No.
Q. Influence -- legal or judicial judgments?
A. Not that I can think of.
Q. By any professional organization with which you identify?
A. Affecting my work life?
Q. Uh-huh, the decisions you make, how you work or content you
choose to teach?
A. Oh, in that sense, yes. I belong to NCTM, I get their journal
and often they have suggestions or ideas or anecdotes or
histories, if they sound fun or if I think they sound like
they would work, be helpful, then I'll incorporate them into
my course.
Q. TM is teachers of math and N is for national; what is the C?
A. NCTM is the National Council of Teachers of Math, secondary
math.
Q. You don't belong to any teacher's association?
A. No.
Q. Influence -- in-service training or your own continued
education?
A. Any influence on my work life? Well, you know, I'm not sure
which of our meetings are in-service and which are not in-
service type things. We have meetings by the thousands and I
know next Thursday there's one that's been, you know, named an
in-service day, and I know there are others. So I'm not so
sure which of the things I'm thinking of are in-service or
just educational type stuff. We've had meetings as far as
drugs and sex and rock and roll, and all the rest of that
stuff. I'm not -- yes, I've gotten stuff out of there that I
can bring to the classroom; I'm just not sure if they were in-
service or not.
Q. Or informational. How did that -- Can you think of an
example of a time when you felt influence by the --
A. I can't think of any specific examples, but, you know, the
drugs and alcohol work certainly sensitized me more to that in
the classroom, and I'm not saying that I see it in the
classroom more clearly now that I went to that class, but at
least I'm more aware of different things that could indicate
that as a problem.
Q. Okay. Incident -- students?
A. Well, sure, I mean, every day if you're going to respond to
the feedback you get from those students, it's going to change
your work on a short-term basis while you're responding to
their needs or feedback, so in that little picture, yeah, it's
constant influence.
Q. Can you think of a specific example where you felt that
influence?
A. Well, today, again, I have such a short-term memory, but when
50 percent of my students showed up today and we had the test
scheduled and they voiced the feeling that they didn't want a
test today, I agreed with them although I was probably leaning
in that direction anyhow. Let me see. Well, as far as
scheduling extra help with students, which is a major part of
what private schools provide, you know. That happens
frequently; you see a student struggling and make the offer,
or many times the student will come and ask for additional
help, so there's an influence on my work as far as being
driven by students, I mean scheduling an extra help session or
something like that, or focusing on particular questions that
students have in the classroom that I hadn't anticipated
needing further clarification, or something like that. I
don't know, I'm really groping here, and I'm embarrassed that
I can't think of any specific things.
Q. Well, you'll probably think of lots of them after I leave.
Incident -- colleagues?
A. Yeah. You know, when I first came here, I learned a great
deal of stuff from colleagues, even from the almost mundane
type of things to make sure to incorporate in written reports
to parents, so there's one example, because they knew the
field, they had been dealing with the parents, so they were
able to instruct me in key issues I should touch on. I know
that's a fact.
Q. What are some of those issues that parents want to hear about?
A. The parents want -- the private school parents are very
concerned with their kids' success, so one thing they're
concerned with is knowing where their kid is standing as far
as his performance goes, so one thing that's really important
is -- it's almost impossible to send too many notes home, both
atta boy notes and also not so good notes. So that's one
thing you almost cannot err on the side of doing it too much.
The more feedback to parents, the better. So that's one issue
that people always talk about.
Q. The last question in this area is incident -- parents?
A. Well, it's almost the same thing. I had a phone conversation
with a parent, more than once, and in the course of the
conversation we said -- you know, the most recent one I
committed to sending weekly notes home on this kid, a 10th
grade student doing algebra and her grades fell from a B to a
C+, it's very upsetting to the parents because they have high
levels of expectations for their kid, and they were surprised
that they didn't have enough warning that this child's grade
was dropping from B to a C+ over a quarter, from the second
quarter to the third quarter, and so I committed to send
weekly reports home. So there's one thing that I'll be doing
and this is not the only time that stuff like that comes from
parents.
A. Well, my guess is through the board but it could be XXX,
it could be YYY for all I know, maybe some calculus
students' parents said something to WWW. That just by
itself wouldn't have a great deal of effect, but if there are
enough voices behind there, it would have an effect.
Q. Creative attempt to improve the classroom . . . thwarted or
altered by any of these sources of influence. . .?
A. An idea of mine or others that was --
Q. Creative or innovative.
A. No, I can't, I don't know if that's because all of my creative
ideas are so great or if I don't have any creative ideas or
what, but I can't think of anything that I wanted to do that
I wasn't able to.
Q. Describe -- a failed attempt by any of these sources to
influence you that you resisted?
A. They want to change our or -- am I understanding this?
Q. Yeah, they want something to happen that you resist. How do
you work around it?
A. Oh, oh. Gee, I can't think of anything like that either. In
mulling over this, I was thinking of the computer courses. I
also teach computer -- elementary computer programming to
middle school people, and that started when I came to this
school in 87, and it really was just an open-ended thing. You
know, all my task was, essentially was, kick this around, play
with it, see where it goes. So for a year, actually for two
years, but the first year I was just setting that up with
teaching basics. This is the second year I've been doing it
and halfway through this year it was clearly apparent to me
that the structure had to change. We had set it up so that
middle school kids would -- by middle school, I mean 7th and
8th grades -- would do a full year of basic computer every
other day. And there was just not that much stuff there and
the kids get bored. And we're driving these ten-year-old TRS
AD's, very limited machines, very ancient, and there's a
certain amount of fun there but it gets old fast. The way it
was set up, the fourth grade would be doing this, the fifth,
sixth and seventh grade, and I would be teaching all of those
people. So it was apparent to me last year that we weren't
going to be able to get through the seventh grade, because
some of the seventh graders I would have been teaching for
four years, and certainly not teaching them the same things
but teaching the same sort of stuff. So I spoke to ZZZ and
he had felt this way before, and WWW and XXX, so next
year we're making a change. So that also makes me feel I was
heard, not only me, but along with QQQ and others. So we're
changing it from that four-year structure to just a one-
quarter-a-year-type structure. So, anyhow, this is off your
question a little because I was thinking -- the question was,
what did they not want me to do that I coped with?
Q. How you worked around a rule, a policy -- has there ever been
a time when you didn't agree with the policy or rule and found
a way to work around it?
A. There are certainly plenty of rules and policies that I don't
agree with, but very often I just ignore them.
Q. Can you tell me one?
A. Well, sure. Really, in the faculty handbook, teachers are
supposed to wear shoes, not sneakers. So I wear them and
nobody says anything and that's that. You know. So there's
lots of little rinky-dink stuff like that. More substantive
issues though are -- mostly I don't do that, mostly I just
give them what they want, and that's okay. There's nothing I
fundamentally disagree with, so even if I don't agree, I don't
take a strong stand. I can't think of any where I have.
Q. This last question I have duplicated for you to look at while
I ask if you could refer to it. It's next to the last. If
you could rank the following activities . . . .
A. Okay, B is 1; C is 2; let me just clarify selection A -- is
that over the year, the curriculum decisions or the day-by-day
decisions of content, topics, and skills to be taught?
Q. What you teach each day.
A. Oh, well, heck, then maybe that should be number 1, because
each day I do what I want to do.
Q. But that content still follows from the --
A. That's what I say, is this addressed to tomorrow's plan or to
the year's curriculum that we're working on? Because tomorrow
I can do whatever I want to do; over the course of the year,
I'm going to confer with the department head, the
administration, and refer to the curriculum.
Q. The way that you're talking, that way.
A. Okay. That's how I first saw it, you know. So let me go
back. B is 1; C is 2; A is 3; D is 4.
Q. Now the last question. What does it mean to you when people
talk about bureaucratic constraints on teachers?
A. To me, bureaucratic constraints on teachers means that
essentially there's a list and the teachers have to check off
the boxes on the list. As far as five-step lesson plans, I
don't even know what it is, as far as qualifications for
certification, as far as the particular formats and forms that
things must be done, and we have some of that rinky-dink shit
here, too. Like report cards to parents have to be written in
black ink. Why? Because somebody thinks it makes a much
nicer appearance if the report cards -- report forms --
because they're printed in black ink, if everybody wrote in
black ink, it would look really nice, instead of having blue
ink. So that's part of the bureaucratic stuff, also, you
know, use the correct pen. It's another element on the
checklist that you have to work your way through to get
through the bureaucratic constraints. That's what I think of
when I think of bureaucratic constraints on teachers is that
never-ending stream of paper which is full of line items with
little empty boxes next to them which have to be checked off.
Q. Besides the report card, are there other times when you have
that?
A. Well, that's something here -- also part of the bureaucracy
here is -- well, you know, contracts are coming up, and one of
the elements in the contract is -- I'm the geometry teacher
and other responsibilities as needed by the head master. So
it's really an open-ended contract; whatever he wants, he
gets, and so that's the way the contract is written and it's
certain bureaucratic stuff, but, you know, it's tough to say
no, what that does is make it tough to say no. We really need
a timekeeper at Friday's basketball game, and he wouldn't put
it this way, I don't mean to imply that, but I'm just boiling
it down to that, you know, I don't think you've made it to a
basketball all this season and we like it when teachers come
to basketball games and support the students outside of school
even if it's Saturday night and you've never kept time, so how
about it this coming Saturday? Okay, it's hard to say no.
That's one thing that happens in private schools. Since this
is essentially a small business, if the customers aren't here,
we're not here either. We have to really go above and beyond
the requirements of public school teachers, which certainly
have their own stuff, but they really don't have to -- and
since I've been on both sides, I feel the experience in
responding to this -- there's no extra curricular duties in
public schools that aren't compensated. Here, you know, it's
like a bottomless pit that will never be filled up, because no
matter how much you're doing, there's always one more thing
you could do to make Green Fields or any private school a
better place, so there's lots and lots of responsibilities
which weren't part of my experience at the two public schools
that I taught at. It's much more clearly defined; whereas
here it is much more nebulous and encompassing and surrounding
sometimes.