Why I Started and Stopped Teaching
My First Big Lesson in the Limits of Reform
It’s 6:30am in September of 2012 and my footsteps on the hard floor have a crisp echo against the lockers. It’s empty and quiet before school starts at (formerly) Patrick Henry High School (now Camden High) in Minneapolis, MN. When I get to my classroom, I hang up my coat, put my (sad leftover undercooked spaghetti) lunch in my mini-fridge, and get ready for whatever the day may bring. I get ready to address and care for whatever needs or issues or dreams my students have. Oh and I also get ready to teach Math - which honestly I care less about than helping my students figure out who they are, how to navigate this world, and what they want for their lives.
Unfortunately though, that wasn’t my job.
My job was to get ninth graders to pass a Math test. My job was to get Juniors and Seniors who failed Math to be able to competently navigate Polynomial Long Division (which I in present-day as a Software Engineer, Data Scientist, and Investor have NEVER EVER USED).
Something about the system just felt broken.
If you’re looking at my career journey on LinkedIn, the only way I can describe it is… strange. “What’s the through-line here” I would wonder to myself (if I didn’t know me). And the answer would be: “I’m a deeply caring individual who’s also very smart in Math and Engineering. And all I’m trying to figure out is: What the shit do I do with that?
So I’ve bounced around a lot.
And (un?)fortunately my (naive?) idealism helped me uncover some really great truths to help focus my journey.
Public Sector
I started in the Public Sector, hoping to do as much “good” as I could (more on that can of worms down the line).
But before landing there, I started college in Chemical Engineering and quickly realized I didn’t want to be in a factory the rest of my life. Even though I was excelling in chemistry and engineering courses, I wanted to be closer to working with people. But again, my skills were in Math. So I didn’t really know what to do and just kept taking Math classes and ended up with fluency in Spanish, a minor in Linguistics, and a degree in (abstract) Mathematics. Graph Theory, Non-Euclidian Geometry, and N-Dimensional Analysis (Calculus, Linear Algebra, etc.) especially were some of my favorites. Be it noted I never touched a software course in undergrad. I’ll pick that up later (*foreshadowing music*)
But what the shit do you do with all that when you don’t want to go into Engineering? I took an Actuarial class and remember being slightly surprised because I think I aced the entire course. Like maybe one thing wrong in a whole semester. Finance Math wasn’t specifically difficult for me. But, I didn’t want to go into Finance (yet). Mostly because all of the Finance people I knew were either douchy or not making the world any better or just greedy.
So, I’d worked with kids most of my life (camp counselor, volunteering trips abroad, teaching abroad) and decided I’d try teaching as a career. I completed a Masters of Math Ed program and started teaching. I only really cared about teaching where I would be most needed - so taught at a school with very high levels of poverty and under-resourced-ness (kids, neighborhood, families).
I loved teaching and the kids. My favorite moments were getting to be, basically, a caring respectful adult to these kids. Helping them figure out what they want to do in the world, being kind when they might expect otherwise from adults, listening to them, enjoying them, respecting them, and yes teaching them math so they can get to where they were going in the world.
It didn’t take me long though to realize that Teaching was a shit job for me. Low pay. Little respect in the community. Lack of adequate resources for the teachers and kids. One of my mentor teachers from Grad School had told me, “If you ever hear the phrase ‘High Expectations’ and there’s insufficient resources being allocated… run.”
I also realized that the effect of change I wanted to have in these kids lives and in the world more broadly was a scope and scale greater than what would be possible as a teacher.
I remember thinking, “If I ever wanted to reform teaching, I would need to stay as a teacher for 20-30 years and MAYBE, just MAYBE they would listen to me.”
“Ineffective, unfortunately,” I thought to myself.
Before finally leaving, the school district was going to start a new school (or maybe just was recruiting different teachers to go to a different school) and I was chosen or hand-picked to transfer there. I interviewed with the principal. I told him what I care about and why I’m a teacher. He looked at me dead in the face and said, “You have too much G.A.S. sir. You have too much Give A Shit.”
I remember at the high school I worked at, we didn’t have air conditioning. But the new district headquarters (the Davis Center) was being built state of the art. So - elite state of the art workplace, building, and environment for the “leaders” not in the classroom, but our students, our kids had to go to school in 90 degree heat and try to “learn” while some district accountant is walking on a treadmill desk listening to a podcast and balancing spreadsheets next to $20,000 art pieces.
“Make it make sense,” I thought to myself.
And it doesn’t make sense. that’s the whole bit.
It was then that I first realized that “the only people getting to make any big choices here, are the people with the money and the power. The money is the power here.”
Whoever controls the money gets to control what (good or bad) policies or strategies get put into place.
That’s how all of this works. And when we don’t acknowledge and honor it, we do a disservice to any system we’re a part of or responsible to. In this case, those most (negatively) affected are: students, teachers, parents, and families.
That was my first taste of that specific truth about the world, shown to me via the Public Sector. It was the beginning of a ten year journey that would lead me to where I am now and what I’m up to.
But more on that later.
After leaving teaching, I had a professor who took pity on me (I think he just liked me) and heard I needed some work, and so he helped get me a job writing a Math textbook. I was on a team of 10 or so, all charming and winsome retired teachers over the age of 50. And then there was me - a still idealistic yet burned tf out 25 year old with zero fashion sense and questionable haircut style choices. I got paired with a delightful older woman named Deloris and she had trouble using a computer sometimes. I adored her and working with her (and she me). 😂🥰.
** To Be Continued **
Thanks for reading. Wishing you all the good things today.
Matt Rowe