Ms. Fortey is an English teacher at South Salem High School. She’s the teacher that has been at South for the most consecutive years. In the first five minutes of talking with her, she told me she hated high school.
“I was bored. I hated the politics and the gossip that came with it”. She used to hide out in her English teacher’s room, Mrs. Mackenzie. It didn’t surprise me when three more people walked into her classroom during the course of the interview.
Since the very first day I stepped into Ms. Fortey’s classroom, I felt a different atmosphere than anywhere else. The kids love to be there, and so does she. “I genuinely like my students and that changes how you react to them,” she told me as we started talking about the current teacher burnout. It’s no flash news by now that teachers are quitting more than ever. They don’t feel supported in their jobs and they aren’t even respected enough to choose their own curriculums. “I’m really lucky” are words Ms. Fortey repeats throughout the interview quite often. West Salem tried recruiting her quite heavily but she says “I was so comfortable here and I had no guarantee that I was going to teach what I wanted if I transferred”
I’m trying to find out what it is about this woman that makes her persevere to stay in her job when it feels like everyone is telling you to run from it. I asked her about the support of the administrative team. I wonder if that could contribute to the reason why some educators don’t find passion in teaching anymore.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a principal that made me think I wanted to leave” Ms. Fortey replies. However, we kept digging into her more than 25 years of teaching and I found out that when a teacher took over her class, the class died and she got assigned to a different section. When she got back from leave she went and talked with the assistant principal at the time: “I need something that feeds my soul or I will run screaming from the building”. Those fortunate enough to know Ms. Fortey can hear her tone in that last part. “That was probably the closest I got to quitting”.
“It’s huge (the support of the admin). I’m not entirely sure why they decided I was worthy” I’m surprised to hear her say this again later in the interview.
“There were a couple of teachers that decided I was worthwhile. One of them even wrote her professional development goal as mentoring me, and didn’t tell me until years after”. She sounds puzzled as to why they put their trust in her. Shortly after I asked her about strategies to connect with the kids and she laughed.
“I’m not laughing at you, but a couple of principals ago they told me I needed to teach an in-service with teachers on how to do it. You either have it or you don’t. I don’t know why what I do works so well other than I can’t figure out how to do anything else other than just be myself.” As the interviewer, I stepped out mentally for a second and started putting some pieces together. It makes sense to me on why many other staff members saw something in Ms. Fortey that decided to “adopt” her.
“You know I have to ask you the question. You are not good at boundaries, you work outside of contract hours, you actually appreciate teenagers… What is the secret to still being here? To love what you do?”
Ms. Fortey laughs and starts answering: “I was talking with my mom about this, and I’m not saying this is the answer, but she thinks it’s because I chose to be a teacher rather than settled.”
“I think it’s also because you are either cool with kids or you are afraid of them. If you are afraid of them, you have to control them.” Fortey follows. Her last phrase before I stopped recording was: “I just wanna teach, have my kids, and for everyone to let me do my thing”.
The secret to being a teacher? Genuinely liking your job. Many teachers are now having the realization that they were there for the wrong reasons. When the pandemic started they realized they were there for the kids, and not having control over what and how to teach was overly frustrating. Others were there for the money. I’m joking of course, no teacher does it for the money. Others were there to “simply teach,” and failed to understand that teenagers can’t just “simply learn”. The act of being a teacher is accompanied by showing compassion, empathy, listening to your students, solving questions, even some not related to your subject matter, but the teachers that had to put up a facade discovered it was not sustainable anymore.
Even in the perfect circumstances, Ms. Fortey says “Teaching isn’t easy. Even when you love it, it’s not easy. It’s exhausting.”
