Categories: Jobs & Education; Eat & Drink

A Teacher Takes On New York City

By aliciak
updated 2 months ago

Once upon a time, I was a hardworking, caffeinated, sometimes stressed, underpaid teacher in this fair city. I only began drinking coffee when I started working for the public school system and this is also when I discovered happy hours. In other words, teaching is a crazily demanding job and I was burned out at the age of 21 from my supposed lifelong calling. So, I chucked it all and dabbled in alternative education positions that did not involve the Bronx and HSers throwing balls of paper and chewed gum at me. Then chucking education altogether, now I (ambivalently) make a living writing and hustling in a different way, but not before I learned a thing or twenty about being a teacher in New York. Walk with me, impressionable children.

How It All Started

I always wanted to teach, always had education/camp/babysitting jobs, but I’m also someone with no set career path or goals. Madeleine Albright was the speaker at my college graduation and rambled on about swimming in an ocean of love, staying afloat, and other metaphors about water and boats (original!), but the part that hit me the most was this: “I hope you are all doers, and not drifters.”

WHOA. Back up Madeleine, why can’t you be both? A doer who drifts, a drifter who does? I think you can. I was reminded of The Great Gatsby, “boats against the current…” Is it such a bad thing to be without a plan, to be knocked around a bit en route to somewhere? I should have known right then and there that my feigned attempt at having a sound plan and firm goals, in the form of NYC TEACHING FELLOWS would never work out…

New York City Teaching Fellows

There I was in the spring of my senior year watching all my friends apply to graduate schools and lining up jobs. Hmm, I thought, should I be doing that too? So, I applied to this program, HOPING I wouldn’t get accepted, because applying was enough achievement for me. I was doing something! I’m horribly impractical and impulsive, but look at me now!

I crafted a really silly application essay about “playing school” in my basement when I was little (true story), thinking I sounded crazy. They were enamored. I submitted further silly essays, thinking there’s NO way they’d hire someone like me. They approved me to come to NYC for 5 hours of interviews. (I cried in the post office upon reading the acceptance letter). I tried sabotaging my chances in person! Again, I was accepted. OH MY GOD. NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

My friends all laughed at me and suddenly I was signing away two years of my life. Why? Because only something like 15% of applicants are accepted…that’s like Ivy-League stats! They probably know what they are doing in choosing me, right? And hey, I always wanted to move to New York!

Staples of the Office Superstore

490 Broadway, New York, NY 10012

If you’re a teacher in New York, you too will be going here alllll the time. And awkwardly carrying giant tablets and stacks of notebooks on the subway with that defeated look on your face. And the school year won’t have even started! You can get the Staples Discount card for teachers and feel special.

Kmart Stores

770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003

You can find some cheap school supplies at the Big K, but sadly, you will ALSO probably be doing your “grocery shopping” here because teachers don’t make $$$. Can I express how happy it would make me that Shasta cola was $2 for a 12-pack and a box of pancake mix (just add water!) was also $2? You know life is bad when you bring cold pancakes for lunch everyday and eat them with your hands, no butter or syrup. But, children are the future, and you’re helping them…one limp pancake and generic cola at a time.

Sad times, folks.

Barclay School Supplies

166 Livingston St, Brooklyn, NY 11201

New York is short on real school supply shops for teachers, but Barclay is probably one of the biggest in the country. If you have little kids, it’s especially good for DECORATING your classroom, which let’s face it, is the best part about teaching. (Right?) I used to love helping my mom staple up borders and come up with decor schemes and themes.

Museums!

As a former NYC public school teacher AND a museum educator, I know that museum field trips are a good deal. They are subsidized, fully or almost fully, by the city, and who wouldn’t pay anyway to leave the classroom and explore? If you want to visit a museum, botanical garden or other cultural place BEFORE taking your kids there, you can often request a “teacher’s pass,” which will get you free admission to check things out on your own.

Happy Hour Time!!!

Oh, but then it started to suck. Because you are teaching summer school all day, then in class sometimes at night. On the weekends, you work on lessons. You DON’T sleep. Instead, you attend reeeeeally loooooong happy hours so that you can complain about teaching in booze-filled rants. Happy hour WAS happy, and it wasn’t. It was like a therapy session, except that you never made progress. Where did the money go?!?

Patio Lounge

179 5th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217

It’s a teacher bar! No really, it is. This could fall under “perks” too, because at Patio Lounge you get $ knocked off your drink price if you show your teacher ID. But like I said, all the conversations are about TEACHING, so it’s a little overwhelming. They do make a fine spiked hot chocolate in the winter time, however.

Bar None

98 3rd Ave Frnt A, New York, NY 10003

Many a cheap beer consumed here, as my Teaching Fellow friends and I read our Village Voice horoscopes and tried to predict our fates in life. The forecast was rarely good, but at a dive bar with beer pong and a “wheel of death” (it was a sign!), it really doesn’t matter. We would then move on to reading “Savage Love” for pure entertainment value. Oh, the summer of ‘03.

Off the Wagon

109 Mac Dougal St, New York, NY 10012

Gotta love the frat boy sports bars! Love. When you had a tough day of teaching apathetic 9th graders who could care less about the authors you love, it’s time to play darts. Or pool. It’s about throwing or smacking things around basically. And taking advantage of the $1 beer at Ladies’ Night. I have never had a bad time here; the memories flow right along with the Coors and Sam Adams.

85a

85 Avenue A New York, NY 10003

85a is no longer in existence, much like my teaching fellows run! But this is where it all went down. My last happy hour as a teaching fellow was here, 9/19/03. When I went home, I realized that 3 hours at happy hour, a supposed “release” from the day, was spent COMPLAINING about teaching. My journal entry reads:

“I’ve decided to quit. I want comfort, time to think. Kelly says Scorpios are non-committal; maybe it’s true? It’s not even ‘I’m no good at this,’ but more, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this.’ I don’t care about these kids, I feel stuck, I have headaches all day, every day and tonight I felt nauseous at the thought of going in Monday. I’m worried what people will think about me quitting, but I don’t care at the same time. The only thing that really matters is what I think.”

Lessons Learned

Well, I have no regrets. Everything that has followed my days as a teacher has all been worth it. The exciting, the challenging, the difficult. Lessons learned? Many:

Don’t commit to something just to commit to something. Journal entry 3 days after quitting: “The same question. Always. ‘What do I do now?’ It was always there, but I had a 2-year delay to work with. Even though all of this is scary, it’s also exciting. I have to think.”
School Administrations are worse than the kids sometimes. “Admin” is your support system, but when they are ten times crazier than the craziest person you’ve ever met, you’re done for. Having books in the first 2 weeks of teaching would have been grand, or enough desks, or you know, principals who didn’t practically sexually harass you.
One door closes, but another one opens. Cheesy perhaps, but oh so true. Just try to be the one doing most of the opening and closing.
I’m still a good teacher. One of the doors that opened was eventually working at the New York Botanical Garden in the education department. After teaching a class to elementary school kids without much prep and only a few hours of sleep, the 60-something-year-old NYBG volunteer came up to me, looking so serious: “Alicia, on a scale of 1 to 10, you are an 11. That was the best teaching I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been around a while. You’ve really got it, I hope you know that.”