Being committed to one's students
can mean that one decides not to act on what makes the most sense for oneself.
Let me explain.
There is a possibility that the pension plan in which I participate as a Maryland teacher will be changed in a fashion to require me to teach until I am 71 in order to get the full benefit of the additional pension benefits for which I would be paying between the end of the school year now. I probably will not know that until May. By then it might be exceedingly difficult to find another teaching job - at a minimum I need to keep working fulltime at least until I turn 66 and can also draw full social security. That pushes me in the direction of cashing in some IOUs and grabbing a job I know I could have at a public charter school in DC where I have some connections. But I cannot make that call unless I am prepared to accept a job offer now.
Were I to announce I were leaving, it would devastate my current students. While they could understand the need to protect myself financially, all the work done to build relationships, particularly with some of those in my non-AP classes who are most troubled would be lost.
Further, even now it is awful late to begin finding a competent replacement to teach my AP classes. Tentatively, I may have 4 section of AP next fall. No one else in the building is yet trained to do AP. I do not know of anyone who wants to take on the challenge, particularly when after this year non-AP students will have no state test for which to prepare. Given the financial struggles of our system, recruiting someone trained to do AP would be difficult, and with one exception, I am not certain the other AP teachers in the system's other high schools would want the burden of 4 AP classes - in all except perhaps one of the other 22 high schools no one has more than 1 section of AP, and no more than 26 in a class, while I have had up to 38 this year.
There is more.
