I just read this moving post at Daily Kos from a veteran teacher: “I Don’t Want to Be a Teacher Anymore.” I am sitting here stunned, visualizing, suddenly and involuntarily, the image of a cocoon, and the immense struggle that it must take a caterpillar to break out of that thing and become a butterfly. I know it’s a hackneyed symbol, but it is a real life phenomenon.
Somehow it seems that it’s time for teachers to find a way to leave behind the dark cloud that controls our so much of our profession, and move into a new phase. In the new phase we become the vibrant professionals we truly should be. Like butterflies, we are admired, studied, and protected, but maintain our mobility and life force, as we do our most important work of pollinating the flowers.
March begins butterfly season in most of the country. I don’t know how, but it’s time to break out and fly.
Ariel Sacks began her 13-year teaching career in New York City public schools after earning her master’s degree at Bank Street College and has taught and coached in grades 7-9. She is the author of Whole Novels for the Whole Class: A Student Centered Approach (Jossey-Bass, 2014) and writes a teaching column for Education Week Teacher.
Ariel’s work as a teacher leader with the Center for Teaching Quality involved her in co-authoring Teaching 2030: What We Must Do For Our Public Schools – Now and in the Future. She was also featured in the CTQ book Teacherpreneurs: Innovative Teachers Who Lead Without Leaving.
She is currently working on a book about the role of creative writing in equitable, 21st century schools, and she speaks and leads workshops on the whole novels approach.
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