An attorney-turned-teacher offers some recommendations gleaned from the ups and downs of his four-year stint as a high school English teacher
February 5, 2025
February 5, 2025
By D. Edgar Collins III
In the midst of the global pandemic that turned life upside down in 2020, I traded law books for textbooks. After 30 years of practicing law, I pursued a dream of teaching high school. Four years later, I’m once again a lawyer. We’ll get to that; for now, here are several recommendations I’ve arrived at based on my time as a high school English teacher:
These recommendations (at least the first six) are easy to execute, could make a clear difference in the lives of teachers, and can be easily implemented by any school division or individual school, with little or no cost. I believe they can be game-changers.
Now, moving on to how I arrived at them: I started substitute teaching in 2020 for $88 per day. Schools closed in March and in August I found a high school looking for an English teacher. Administrators would observe me for six to eight weeks and then decide if I could continue on a provisional license. Things got off to a rough start: After one teacher work week I was nominally ready to conduct classes via Zoom for my 10th– and 12th-grade students. But I had no curriculum to teach. It was the Friday of teacher work week, and I had no content to teach my students on Monday. A 3 p.m. department meeting had me hopeful that I would get some direction. However, no one had any content for me. So, I was introduced to the bane of teachers everywhere: uncompensated weekend work. I worked all weekend to come up with something for the first week of school.
Year One: ‘Zooming’ Along
Covid wreaked havoc with instruction. During Zoom classes, students were not required to show their faces so as to avoid any embarrassment that might come if others saw their homes. They could simply turn off their cameras and “attend” class, showing up as a black screen. A background picture would have solved this problem. If a student showed their face (and there were precious few of them), I could confirm their attendance and see whether they were comprehending the lesson. With a black screen I could do neither. Often, I called on students showing a black screen and got silence in response. Were they avoiding participating, sleeping, or not even present? Later, the school acknowledged this problem and changed the rule, but students simply continued not to show their faces.
That year, I was appointed boys’ JV soccer coach and having the opportunity to work with those students saved the year for me. It was wonderful to get back to some level of normalcy. Coaching is a specialized type of teaching, for an extended period of time (two hours a day for practice), in a concentrated subject. One very rewarding aspect was seeing Latino, Black, and White players come together as a team and play the “beautiful game.” Life is a team sport, and it was wonderful to instruct these young men in a game for which we shared a passion.
Year Two: Great and Terrifying Moments
Year two was my best year of teaching, as the first-year jitters were over and I felt like I was just hitting my stride. Students were back in school but required to wear masks. It was the teachers’ job to ensure those masks were worn properly, covering nose and mouth. Droopy masks, like droopy pants, were verboten. The students wore their masks in ways, though, that had me fully expecting COVID-19 to wipe us out.
In was also in year two that I was also introduced to the darkest side of teaching. I’ll never forget the Sunday afternoon I saw an alert for a student email on my phone. His message said he wouldn’t be in class Monday because he was going to kill himself. For 30 seconds I froze. Then I responded, pleading with him not to end his life, that he might not know it, but he had so much to live for. I called 911 and asked for a welfare check on him. I had his first and last names but because he was a minor, he wasn’t in any directory the dispatcher could find, and I didn’t know his address. Eventually, the dispatcher told me she thought they’d found him and were sending help. I may have helped save a life that day. Later, a school counselor confirmed that first responders got there in time and that the student would be missing school for a while.
After that, I made sure to carry my school laptop at all times so that I could look up a student’s home address, if needed. I find it curious that the email popped up on my cell phone alerts, since it came from my school email address, and I don’t recall such an email popping up before or since. Divine intervention? Later in the year, another of my students attempted suicide. Although he physically recovered, he never returned to school. I had no inkling that either of these students would try to take their lives.
Year Three: Zoology
My third year seemed promising, as I’d been invited to teach in the school’s specialty Medical Program. I designed a curriculum focusing on medical and life issues that included taking students to a working courthouse, where we put Dr. Frankenstein on trial for the crimes of his creature. (The estates of the murdered characters sued Dr. Frankenstein in civil court for wrongful death). Students were attorneys, witnesses, and jury members, and all testimony had to come straight out of Mary Shelley’s novel. They loved it. We also studied a novel by Virginia author Beth Macy, called Dopesick, based on the opioid epidemic that ruined so many lives in southwest Virginia. I brought in guest speakers from local support groups, including recovering addicts, to put a human face on the problem. Much to my surprise, no parents objected to this and, in fact, many thanked me for my efforts.
I had three preps that year—C-level freshman, honors juniors, and Medical Program. My C-level freshmen were a nightmare. In any classroom, there’s a primal struggle for control. In soccer, the referee has a whistle and cards; as I found out, the teacher has none of these tools. At my school, there was a two-step process to address behavioral problems. The first, called “curbside,” is where an administrator comes to the classroom to address a situation. Half the time no administrator would show up. When they did, it was an exercise in futility. If you’d told a student to put their phone away for the 237th time, and they have refused, having an administrator come tell them the same thing is useless. The second step was an “administrative referral,” an amorphous concept where, in theory, an administrator would assign a punishment for bad behavior. In my four years of teaching, I was never given any information about the results of an administrative referral. It appeared students were given privacy about their punishment.
The worst class of my C-level freshman was fourth period, where I had six students who were totally out of control. After the first day, I texted all six of these students’ parents, begging for assistance and/or advice on how to handle them. Not a single parent responded. I nicknamed this group “Zoology.” At one point when the class was out of control, a student looked me in the eye and asked why I hadn’t quit yet. On another occasion, I was sitting on top of a student desk reading a novel to them. As I read, something hit my leg, then rolled on top of the desk. It was a tampon. It lay there on the desk looking at me and seeming to ask, “Now what are you going to do, Collins?” I took one deep breath and continued reading.
A colleague called Zoology the worst class she’d seen in 25 years of teaching. Our new department chair decided to use the following technique: I would split up my six offending students and send them, with their assignments, to other teachers for the period. This worked marvelously and actually allowed me to teach; it also meant that the six students were actually doing their work as they had no classmates to act up for. However, the assistant principal demanded that I stop this practice, noting that those students “had a right to learn.” I wondered about the rights of the other 24 students in that class, whose learning was harmed by the disruptions.
Year Four: The Journey Grinds to a Halt
I started my fourth year with high hopes, but it actually became my final year in the classroom. My Medical Program classes, which had been my savior the year before, became my undoing. Just before Thanksgiving, a student asked me if she could serve apple pie to the class and sing “a song of Thanksgiving,” which she assured me was “school appropriate.” She arrived with the pie, then sang to the class using a hand-held microphone that distorted her voice. She made up lyrics to insult a boy in class who had spurned her advances. She received a three-day suspension and I naively believed the matter was over. But I was written up because I should have “appropriately vetted” the offending song. The student knew she had other plans and used the song as a ruse to ad-lib lyrics. And I was held responsible for student speech. Where does that duty end? Did I have to vet every student comment made in class ahead of time to make sure it’s not offensive? How can you have the kind of class interaction all good teachers seek—a free-flowing discussion between students and teacher? I felt scapegoated.
Also in my Medical Program class was a student with special needs whose file noted that he purposely annoyed other students and would lie to get out of work. I found these comments extraordinary, but they turned out to be very true. He was grossly immature, had a pathological need to be the center of attention at all times, and was routinely defiant. He’d grab other students’ Chromebooks, often watch sports highlights on his, and frequently refused to put his phone away during class.
His mother called for a meeting with several administrators and me and, despite never having spoken to me, announced that she had a problem with every aspect of my teaching. In particular, she objected to my writing instruction, which I’d begun to help students prepare for the Writing SOL test. As she continued to attack me, none of the other participants came to my defense. I was also accused of failing to meet the student’s IEP because I did not provide “back up notes.”
Though I was in my fourth year of teaching, I’d never heard of back up notes. This is because, as noted by my SPED co-teacher, back up notes don’t really apply to English instruction. None of my colleagues had ever done back up notes for students. Nonetheless, it was determined that I failed to provide them. It became clear that this was a ruse by the mother to inflate her son’s grades, which the administration demanded I do.
As a result, I was asked to leave the Medical Program which I had worked hard to design and lead. I was also placed on a performance improvement plan (PIP), because I’d failed to provide back up notes. The PIP had a long list of requirements, none of which included anything about back up notes. It was just a vehicle to document my alleged problems as a teacher, which, incidentally, had not shown up until my fourth year of teaching.
I’m embarrassed to say I did not see the concomitant poor evaluation coming. I was rated “needs improvement” and “unsatisfactory” after proficient ratings the previous three years. This year, though, I had an unhappy parent criticizing me at every turn. During the school year, I was praised for my professionalism in dealing with her, but then given a “needs improvement” evaluation. One last thing: My problem student passed his Writing SOL, thanks to my Herculean efforts.
In the end, I traded in my textbooks, dusted off my law books, and went back to being an attorney. Nonetheless, I’m glad I taught. It felt like a noble quest, trying to lead youth in a positive direction. I worked with many excellent students, and I felt I made a positive difference. If the only difference I made was to be there for that one young man during his suicidal ideation, then it was worth it. As a soccer coach, I felt I helped students grow as players and people. I connected with numerous students. It is a powerful experience to observe a student have an “aha moment” and to know you helped them get there. My experience was both painful and joyful, and I appreciate the school being willing to take a chance on me.
Edgar Collins is a pseudonym for the author, a lawyer who taught in a Virginia high school for four years and was a VEA member. A book about his experience, tentatively titled Schooled, is in the works.
Teacher shortages are a serious issue across the country. Here in Virginia, there are currently over 3,648 unfilled teaching positions. (FY23)
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