A teacher's challenges in staying the course

By Robin Dougherty, 9/21/2003

Brendan Halpin loves his job, and he hates it. At 34, he's a 10-year veteran of Boston-area public schools, and he doesn't suffer fools. His tart-tongued memoir "Losing My Faculties: A Teacher's Story" is a workplace dramedy about his tumultuous career in front of the classroom in urban and suburban settings, including one charter school. It sends up short-sighted attempts at educational quick fixes, including an attempt at truancy-prevention he dubs the "Famous Athlete Youth Program" and any new measure ending with the word "initiative."

A champion of students and their ability to learn despite low expectations, insufficient funding, and often-uninspired educators, Halpin has faced criticism from his teaching colleagues for exposing the weak points of a beleaguered public institution already under fire from politicians. His intent, he says, is not to attack public education but to document his mixed experiences: "There are really a lot of great schools in Boston. There's a ton of them."

Halpin, author of the 2002 book "It Takes a Worried Man," is on leave this semester from his job on the English faculty of Brookline High School.

Did you always want to be a teacher, when you were a kid?

Hell, no.

Did you have a conversion experience?

Yes. . . . I worked in the international programs office at my college. They were trying to set up this program where Penn grads would teach [English as a second language] in Tapei, and Tapei would send students to Penn. . . . I had no money. I thought well, this seems like a good opportunity for me. I just needed to come up with the plane ticket. So it was really the opportunity to live in Taiwan that drove me to do that. When I got there, I had to teach. I remember a class where something went really well. I walked out of work feeling really energized and happy, and that had never happened to me before. I had just had office drudgery jobs in college. The idea that you could be working and doing what you wanted was a new one to me.

And you found that you liked teenagers?

That was another thing that came up in Taiwan. I had the opportunity to teach people of all ages. . . . Teens were the people I connected with the best. I really like them. There's an energy and intensity of the teen years, which I think is why high school is burned into my brain in a way in which other four-year periods aren't. There's a buzz to being around people who are living that intensely.

I imagine that being a teacher is like being a TV critic -- everyone has a passing experience with the subject so they think they're experts.

I do feel like that because everyone has been a student. Everyone thinks they know what is involved in teaching. . . . You know when you're in school who is a good teacher or a bad teacher, but do you know what it takes for things to be better?

Some of the criticism leveled at you has to do with why you point out the shortcomings of public education but don't suggest a solution, much less act on one.

I felt like [the book was read] as though it were a policy book, which it's not. I have ideas about what could be done differently. I intended the book to be for a general audience. . . . There are things that I said about [what] I observed or believed. People hold their convictions about education with almost religious fervor. . . . There's something in the book to annoy anyone who is on any side of any educational issue.

There's no philosophy that will carry you through everything that's in front of you. . . . Teachers find this out in a way that consultants and professors of education don't. There are things in my experience that call into question almost any philosophy. If you are going to be rigid about education, the work is going to get in the way of adhering to that [philosophy]. In my first year, I was big on "I have to empower student voices," and I had a class that took this as a license to walk on me. There I was with my great philosophy and that wasn't going to work with these kids. . . .

I'm frustrated with anything that doesn't seem to be benefiting kids. In some places, it's the way the school is run. For example, when I first started teaching, there would be many rules and policies that people couldn't articulate a rationale for. The things that frustrate me are . . . when I saw teachers who weren't working, when I saw policies that weren't working.

Is public education an easy target? Might some people say, "Wow, given what we have to work with, and the low expectations for kids in urban public schools, it's amazing how much learning actually happens"?

I think that last statement is true. I didn't really intend this to be a book about public education. I work in -- I believe in -- public education. I value public education. . . . I was trying to tell my story. My fear would be that people who are opposed to public education take this as ammunition. I think where I'm angriest it's because I believe in it so much. It pains me when it falls short. . . .

I taught a lot of classes that went really well, but that's not a very colorful or entertaining story. What I felt like I was doing was telling the story of why you stay in education. Teacher narratives . . . almost always cover a year. "My Hard Year With Those Tough Kids." I read a lot of those in ed school. When I got to year three and four, I was looking for that book. The "Why I Kept Doing It."

Robin Dougherty, a writer and critic, lives in Washington, D.C. She can be reached at inkrd@aol.com.