Karen and Sandra both related stories about wiser, older teachers that shared not only their resources, but their knowledge and experience as well. I don’t think that this is unique. Myself, along with most of the teachers I started my career with, all had a mentor that took them under their wing and showed them the ropes. As the young and eager teacher full of new creative ideas, I like to think that my mentees also gained something from our working together. My recent move into the world of teaching online opened my eyes to a view of sharing that I had never considered before...that sharing could potentially cost me my job.
Okay, I know it sounds dramatic but hear me out.
I work in a district that over the past 5 years has seen a dramatic increase in the number of teachers laid off each year. Our layoff line is 10-11 years deep this year and has been for the last few. I am one of the teachers that falls into this layoff category, but have been protected from layoff the last few years because of my ‘unique skill set’. As long as I remain teaching online, I get protected from layoff. There are a lot of details around this that I will not bore you with, suffice it to say there are many folks who would love to get into online teaching, even if only for the job security.
So how does this relate to sharing?
Our district recently asked if any DL teachers would be interested in putting on training sessions for f2f teachers around the use of Moodle (which our district uses as its LMS). For me, this is something traditionally I would have been excited about. However, given the climate of deep layoffs, the first thought that came to mind was, “If others with more seniority than me get the skills to be considered minimally qualified...I’m out of a job”. Perhaps I am simply being over cautious, and perhaps some would judge me negatively for this, but my desire for secure, stable work far outweighs any desire to share. This got me thinking about the culture of sharing that exists within K-12 education and whether the seniority based, minimally qualified environment in which it exists is a place that nurtures a positive sharing environment for young teachers? If young teachers are in a position where they have to be concerned about whether they can earn a living or not, I’m sure the idea of sharing what little competitive advantage they may have with others is not something that is very desireable. I would venture a guess that if a person starts the first 10 years of their career with this mentality, it will become very difficult to change once they finally pass that ‘magic line’.
Don’t get me wrong, I am far from having any solutions to offer at this point, it’s just something I started thinking about given the conversations in this course and the time of year….June = Layoff time. I know every district has different policies around layoff/recall, but I would be interested in any thoughts from either newer or experienced teachers. Is this actually an issue or simply the result of an over paranoid mind?