I just read Kevin Brown’s piece An Alternative Path to Teaching at Inside Higher Ed. Brown makes a short argument that recent Ph.D.’s might consider boarding school as teaching option given the dismal state of the college/university job market. While he’s right on some topics, he misses the mark on some.

He’s correct that boarding school students tend to have more substantive reading lists and smaller classes. He leaves out easier classroom management.

But some of his observations seem to come from unique experience or limited understanding:

“…highly motivated students…” In a perfect world, yes.  But, certainly, not always.

“Minimal to no committee work and meetings,”  Maybe.  But I remember plenty of faculty and committee meetings in addition to meetings with the academic dean and dean of students, dorm meetings, sit down meals, and phone calls with parents.

“Lower preparation time,” yes, but grading well at high school level is time consuming.

What he seems to miss in his own experience, is the living as an adult in an high school environment where, as the teacher, you’re the first person that students come to for- just about anything. He didn’t live in a dorm with students asking every question that they’d ask of their parents at home.

Living as the proverbial boarding school “triple threat”- teaching, dorm parenting, coaching six days a week- layering meetings, grading/prep, keeping daily track of the wayward advisee, with telephone calls on top of these- seems not to have affected Brown.

I once calculated that boarding school teachers work about 2200 billable hours during the 7.5 months that school is in session.

Good boarding school faculty are special people. They teach well and live comfortably in the fishbowl environment of a collection of 14-19 year olds with reduced time for themselves and families. They take nothing personally and have to find the trials and tribulations of their extended family of teenagers amusing, if not, you wash out.  For a good boarding school teacher, it’s not about you and sometimes set aside yourself for the good of your students.

Considering boarding school teaching a less pressured alternative to college teaching is just plain wrong and fails to give great boarding school faculty their due.

Oh, yeah, the boarding school job market isn’t a bed of roses right now either.

Related posts:

1. Cognitive Brain Research Beginning to Shape Teaching: Not the Holy Grail, But a Start
2. Good Teaching is Committed Work
3. J.D. Salinger Dies; musings on teaching The Catcher in the Rye
4. Four and Out: Sarah Fine Sheds Light on the Grinding Nature of Teaching- the work and and social baggage
5. Reclaiming Boarding School Roots: Communal Responsibility and Frugality