I worked as a public school teacher for about 420 instructional days in Houston, Texas. Through my discussions with dozens of educators and administrators, my interactions with hundreds of students, and my notes and journals of those days (approximately one Leuchtturm1917 60-page Jottbook per 150 days), I came to better understand one of the largest school districts in our nation.

This essay will be an analysis of the interaction between three factors: a struggling public school system, a teacher trying work ethically within it, and the educational ideals that we strive for. Though I will return to the following concepts more explicitly in Part III, I will first explain them and how they’ll be used in the essay. First, there is The Given. The Given is the educational circumstances at a specific time. It’s the state of the district, its schools, teachers, and students. Second, there is The Ethic. The Ethic is the set of better and worse practices/behaviors/attitudes in response to The Given and includes the answer to the question, “How should teachers properly teach in the current situation?” Finally, there is The Ideal, toward which The Ethic aims. The Ideal answers the question, “To where are we striving to lead our students?”

In Part I, I will be describing The Given of my time working in Houston’s public schools. It will summarize my years of notes and conversations and will present the situation that needed responding to. What were the kids like? What was the administration like? What resources did we have? Which did we lack? And so on.

In Part II, I will be recounting The Ethic that I, the teacher, adopted in order to respond to The Given. I’ll compare this to The Ethic that was prescribed by district and school administrators, because there were many moments when mine and theirs seemed to conflict. Which decisions were I led to take, which did I end up taking, and why?

In Part III, I’ll zoom out and try to respond to some of the essential questions that arose from being in such a situation. Can The Ethic be systematized, or is it always simply a response to a situation? To what extent is The Ethic tied to The Given? And what happens when The Ideal and The Ethic do not align? 

Part I: The Houston (partly) Independent School District

The following all occurred within the first two years of my teaching high school in HISD: a female student was shot and killed in a local neighborhood by her ex, a teenage boy; a male student with whom I was very close committed suicide by hanging himself in his garage; another female student hung herself that same semester off a popular wooded path on the way to school; a female student of mine reported being sexually assaulted by another student (I was the first adult she told); a female student of mine reported physical abuse by a parent (I was the first adult she showed); a female student of mine got pregnant by a male student of mine and lost the baby during a complication from which she almost died herself; a male student of mine reported that he had attempted suicide by taking pills; and a student-planned school shooting was thwarted. It was for this reason that the last thing I wrote in my notebook at the end of year two was “traumatized secondhand.”

So why did I go teach there? I’m a native New Yorker anyway. Why submit yourself to this? some might ask. Recall one question that this part of the essay will deal with: What is the state of our student population? All the way from New York, I aimed for this teaching position because I felt the answer to that question was desperation. I wanted to be a guide. I wanted to be a positive role model. Especially for the immigrant students and those who were non-native English speakers—a demographic in which I specialize—I wanted to be the person who introduced them to this country and this language. I felt I could give a fair representation of both—the challenges of both—without letting the kids slide into pessimism or hopelessness. On the contrary: I wanted to show them that both the United States and the English language represented, above all, a glorious opportunity. 

But I will reserve more discussion of my motivations for Part II. This part is a status report. Regardless of one’s past experience or motivations, the administrative setup, or the organizational mission, what was the situation on the ground?

On November 11, 2021, well into the first semester of my first year, I was called to the front office for my first meeting with the principal. I had no idea what she called me to discuss, but I had a lot I wanted to make her aware of. On one side of the office she sat, barricaded in by a large plastic shield on her desk (a relic of COVID times) and flanked by five other administrators. On the other side of the office, just me. During that meeting, the first and last real conversation I would have with that principal—her ousting would come a day later due to student protest over a separate issue and that began the carousel of principals that took charge of the school while I was there (5 in total during that period)—the following was said to me: that I should offer extra tutorials either before or after school, or on the weekends, in order to get my students prepared for state exams and get them performing on grade level, that I should get my wife to come help (she was teaching at a nearby school herself), that teaching was more than an 8-to-4 job (true enough, I guess), that the curriculum I was using was one I should not have access to, and, most hurtful of all (not only to me but to Truth with a capital T), that learning a new language was just like learning to drive a car.

I left that office emotional and dumbfounded. I had never been put under such direct and sudden pressure, and I had never felt less understood. The situation that I was in and the students that I was given called for much more than a few extra hours of exam preparation, and I did say as much. This was the first time I felt that school and district administration were reluctant to acknowledge, and therefore truly grapple with, the truth. 

That truth began like this in year one: my class sizes were 26, 38, 58 (this one would top 60 shortly), 31, 23, and 9, the English proficiency of my students ranged from illiterate (even in their native language) to borderline advanced, and about a third of my students had jobs either before or after school. I was not even made aware of these vastly different student circumstances until after the school year started. I was not adequately trained in the various online applications that I was required to use, I was given a mentor who was absent, and I was given a curriculum that was both over-complicated and insufficient. 

In December of my first year, after speaking out at a district-led town hall on my campus, I was invited to a teacher roundtable with the newly appointed superintendent (his ousting would come not two years later), and it was here I was first able to put my situation into a broader context. Other teachers from around the district confirmed that class sizes were disorganized, that curriculums were unaligned to assessment, and that teachers felt a profound lack of support from above. I noted, among other things, that teachers felt there was no real incentive to go through more professional development, that there was too much student assessment and many students were therefore only putting effort into tested subjects, that not all schools enjoyed the same extracurricular opportunities, and that there was a desperate lack of what is called SEL (Social and Emotional Learning). 

This situation was further upended when, at the start of my third year, the state government of Texas took administrative control of HISD, citing poor assessment performance as a top reason. This set off a political firestorm within which teachers and students would be caught, and from which my wife and I would ultimately flee, prioritizing our health and well-being and unfortunately fulfilling the message of the district roundtable two years prior: if teachers, the most crucial part of a school system, did not feel supported, they would leave.

I had returned to the district in year three with renewed confidence and optimism. But the rollout of the new system that was imposed on us teachers quickly began to chip away at any hope. During the professional development classes teachers were given before the school year started, I wrote the following in my notes: “A beige haze of information… …can’t see what is actionable or pertinent…” What became clear was that even though they asked teachers to cut their summer vacation short in order to receive extra training, district personnel themselves were unprepared for the new system just two weeks before it was supposed to be implemented. And though teachers were full of spirit (as they nearly always admirably were), they were anxious, confused, and frustrated. When questioned, district employees commonly evaded with “Imma stay in my lane…” which prompted me to note “Then who has knowledge of the road???”

One of the new system’s chief proponents said the following to a room of teachers during these first weeks of preparation: “Y’all are gonna teach this way or you won’t have a job.” Another district employee assigned to my campus English department would later interrupt a meeting in an attempt at reassurance by saying she’s “been to the promised land” and that she was “appointed by god for this position.” On the first day of school, I had no curriculum to use. And the soccer club that I had started with much success and participation? That was gone too.

 Year three was also the first time I found myself sitting before a lawyer. The teachers’ union filed a grievance on mine, my wife’s, and three other teachers’ behalf. I explained and then watched as others explained how this new system was either forced upon us or slid right past us without the stakeholder input explicitly required. But this legal proceeding was simply one of dozens, part of a strategy to flood the legal system with complaints and try to win public support for the removal of state interference.  

As I write this, Texas and Houston are still fumbling with the application of a new system to an already desperate situation, and my former students are still sending me updates on the chaos and asking me to come back and save them from it. It’s a painful thing to watch from the sidelines. But it has at least spurred me to write this essay.       

Part II: Handling HISD

We’ll call the educational situation in Part I The Given. The Given could be summarized like this: a disorganized and inefficient school system with underprepared and undersupported teachers meets a student body that varies greatly in diversity and desperation. So, as a teacher, situated between bright-eyed youth and hovering administration, how are you to act? How and why did I respond?

Halfway through my second year, I gave a name to what I thought was the fundamental issue. In preparation for a district meeting of teachers in my subject area, I wrote in my notes that I had to talk about the “alignment problem.” The abilities and goals of my students did not align to the standards that the district set out for me. To recall one example, I had a handful of students who were clearly in need of basic phonics (primary school stuff in English and Spanish), and yet administrators seemed to have their sights fixed on grade-level assessments. Never in one school year could any student go from learning which letter makes which sound to writing about their personal connections to nuanced poetry. 

I would restate this alignment problem and its many iterations to many different people over the course of my period in HISD. But I had to decide to do something about it in the meantime. Something had to go in that lesson plan that would satisfy the administration, and something had to be taught to these boys and girls. 

The lesson plan itself is a good example to use. The template was shared by all teachers in the school (an idea I disagreed with but a battle I chose not to have), and though it changed slightly over the years, there were still dozens of individual sections I had to fill out every week, detailing how long each lesson section would last and which state educational standard I was aiming for. By mid-week every week, teachers had to have their plan for the following week uploaded to a shared drive. 

Given the details of The Given, lesson plan creation was a fruitless, time-wasting endeavor, so I chose to give minimal effort and put only that which would satisfy the requirements of my superiors. I could rarely plan for a week in advance, so I chose to give rough estimates. I could rarely predict how students would respond to one lesson, so I chose to focus only on the next couple of days. I could not expect even half of my students to read or write at grade-level or to progress as the “curriculum map” timeline would have liked, so I chose to upload similar lesson plans over and over again—a practice that was never challenged, casting doubt on how much administration actually monitored these plans. The lesson plan template was unaligned to my classroom, so I chose to let it be unaligned. What was uploaded to the system and what I chose to write in my personal lesson plan notebook varied greatly.

 In short, I chose to respond with an ethic of pragmatism. I prioritized three things above all: a healthy and joyous classroom culture, daily student learning (however small the gains), and a path to graduation. I could not rely on technology, so I had students work with notebooks and pencils every class. I could not rely on implementing curriculum material, so I had to simplify and “scaffold” it until it became nothing like the original. District-mandated PowerPoint slideshows 15-20 slides long, full of text, and calling for this or that internet application would frequently turn into five slides, a bunch of pictures, maybe one full paragraph of text, and simple prompts like “Copy in your notebooks.”

This pragmatism affected my thought process every day, and it affected how I would treat and talk to my students. I was asked to have students working from bell to bell every day, but I had students who had just finished a work shift at midnight, so I chose to let them rest. I was asked to be strict about cell phone use, but I had students whose only connection to family was through their phone, so I let them use it when they finished their work. I never would have discovered these valuable personal details if I had not consciously carved out time to talk with them, which is to say I consciously diverted from the lesson plan and asked about their lives. 

It felt right to respond to The Given in this way, but then the question would arise, “Am I being insubordinate to the district?” Does my ethic and theirs conflict? In a certain sense, it did not matter to me. I felt I was responding appropriately, and in private conversations with my administrators or when they would actually visit my classes, they would acknowledge the same. But then came a constant balancing act where I would have to complete X, Y, or Z bureaucratic process (like the lesson plan) to keep up this facade of compliance while actually behaving differently in the classroom. Some administrators and district personnel chose not to look, or chose not to acknowledge what they saw, or chose to put blinders on and only focus on specific goals like test scores.

On what basis did I feel that I was responding ethically? It was because I accounted for The Given and aimed for The Ideal. The ultimate aim of teaching public school, an ideal which we all ostensibly shared, was that the students were made comfortable in the classroom, confident in their abilities and potential, and committed to graduation. Therefore, it felt not only fruitless but deeply unethical to expect my students to work with the given curriculum. It would advance their progress toward The Ideal in a way that was unnecessarily uncomfortable, overly-demanding, and no more promising of graduation. And though I did not feel like I needed something like test scores to vindicate my approach, they often did. From year two to three, my administrators noted record growth in the listening section on a state exam for my student population.

What mattered to me—in other words, what showed me that my ethic was indeed leading students toward The Ideal—was that this week, the once-illiterate boy could read a complete sentence without any pronunciation errors. What mattered to me was that today, the shy girl felt confident enough to speak aloud and make mistakes in front of the class. What mattered to me was if we could try to write just one more sentence than we had last week, or read one more page. What mattered to me was if I suddenly “forgot” how to speak Spanish for 15 minutes, my students could focus with enough intention to know what the instructions were without the need for my translation. The Ethic was not always comfortable, nor did it always inspire confidence, but it moved my students closer to The Ideal, closer to a diploma and self-esteem, by meeting them where they were and, from there, pushing them slightly but consistently. It was unfortunate that I thought this goal would be better achieved if I diverted from the district advice in so many ways. 

A final example of how my ethic conflicted with that of the district regarded parent communication. Keeping parents informed about their child’s education was always something the district stressed as important, but I was never actually provided with time nor advice for it. I made time for it by using planning or lunch periods, asking to leave meetings early, or, on at least one occasion, escaping from one of the multitude of online professional development classes that I had to take. I was and am in full agreement with the value of calling home, but was surprised by how little this educational strategy was discussed. Both parental communication and data analytics are tools of a teacher’s trade, but the amount of meetings we had about the latter compared to anything close to the former must have been beyond 3-to-1. A misalignment problem indeed. 

Beyond the ethics—beyond how I went about managing the situation—I often wondered if ultimately mine and the district’s educational ideals differed. Surely that students feel comfortable, confident, and committed to graduation were ideals we all shared, and this is an assumption I think it is safe to start with regarding anyone involved in the endeavor of educating our country’s youth. But too often the ethics that best further these ideals seemed either distant—beyond the lesson plan—or minuscule— squeezed in the five minutes between class periods. Based on all the speeches I heard, the presentations I was given, the slideshows I was shown, and the emails I was sent, I would have been forgiven for thinking test scores and data were the most important parts of The Ideal. 

Because I was given many students who were uncomfortable in their lives, not confident of their abilities, and not committed to graduating high school, I felt no misalignment problem within myself. Given the situation, given the choice, and given The Ideal, making ten phone calls home, even just to tell a parent that their child is doing well, always won over another Zoom session about data analytics.

Part III: Some Essential Questions of Educational Ethics

So far, I’ve outlined three major concepts that here I’ll zoom out and examine differently: The Given, The Ethic, and The Ideal. In terms of an ethical philosophical framework, I think these concepts can work in many different situations, not just education. When it comes to making good, right, or rational decisions, we should take into account the circumstances, the good, bad, better, and worse options, and the ultimate ideal we’d like to approximate, even if we never reach it.

In this section, I’ll explore some essential questions that can be made of these concepts and their interaction with one another, and how they relate to education. These are questions that would always float in and out of my mind during my time at HISD. Ultimately, though being quite forced toward pragmatism, I did not regret the majority of the decisions I made, which leads me to believe that I acted ethically regardless of what the answers to these questions might be. Nonetheless, it is worth exploring these questions, if for no other reason than to explore the possibility of a universal educational ethic that we can use to better our species and our planet.   

Does The Given even matter? What if it were neutral? What if it were made to seem neutral?

The first two questions explore the possibility of educational ethics that do not need to account for the circumstances on the ground. In other words, what if all my students were fine (yet still with intellectual variety, of course), my teacher resources were solid, and my support was always a minute away? Would I have acted the same way? Absolutely not. For example, if it were not the case that a student’s phone was their only connection to their family, if it were the case that they went home to their parents every day and didn’t have to go to work after school, I would have been much stricter with pulling out phones during class or not completing a simple Do Now activity. My ideal would have remained the same—get the kid comfortable, confident, and graduated—but my ethic would have been overall more rigorous. 

Though these questions were not relevant to me in terms of helping me do my job well (it was impossible, after all, to treat their situations as irrelevant), they are relevant in terms of being the first step to creating a universal educational ethic. The answer to the question of “What do the best teachers do?” ultimately does not care about the circumstances of any specific school, only to say “The best teachers adapt to the circumstances of their school and scholars.”

The third question involves treating educational ethics as if they are detached from the circumstances on the ground. This, I believe, is unfortunately a matter of convenience and efficiency. One example goes back to the amount of department meetings we had regarding test scores and data analytics. By never discussing the circumstances in which these kids were testing—sometimes students were forced to sit in silence, not being able to do anything, not even sleep, for hours after they had finished the test, which would be irrelevant to test scores if it were not for the fact that they’d have to do this one day after another —we effectively treated the context as irrelevant and this allowed us more time and freedom to dive into numbers and percentages as if they were pure. Another example was the lesson plan. By not taking into account, among other things, the gulf between capabilities that a group of students brought to the classroom, it was more convenient for me to submit a one-size-fits-all lesson plan in a timely manner. I effectively treated that lesson plan as if it were detached from the situation on the ground simply because it was easier to get that requirement out of the way. 

This is definitely not ideal. Though The Ideal of education might not concern itself much with The Given, in any situation where it must be applied (so in any classroom), educators cannot ignore the circumstances of their students and the context of their lives.

What if The Given were ideal? What if it were terribly worse? 

For my situation, I would have imagined The Given being ideal in a way like the following: the students vary in capability, but not by orders of magnitude greater than a couple of grade levels; they have secure home situations, not necessarily with an entire family but with ample familial support; they do not have to work before or after school; I as the teacher have sufficient information on my students before the year starts; I have balanced student rosters, a curriculum that is both fitting and adaptable, and administrative support that is quick and consistent. If The Given were like that, how would The Ethic have looked?

The first thing I could imagine is so much more time. As a teacher, time is both a beautiful blessing and a corrupting curse. But in this ideal case, I would have been blessed with more time to dedicate to the actual pedagogy of my subject area: English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). This would have meant deeper dives into more diverse texts, much more writing, and more complete and fruitful conversations. I could also imagine the inevitability of more rigor. These students would have had fewer excuses to do less work, and I would have had every tool at my disposal to (gently) squeeze the best out of them.

What if The Given looked like the following: students greatly differ in both ability and potential, all of their home lives are miserable, being full of chores and absent of family love, and I as the teacher were given zero resources beyond what I came to the job with? This would require The Ethic of damage control and triage. The Ideal would remain the same, but much more time would be spent on, for example, getting the student to be motivated to do anything, or creating lesson plans from scratch, or scaffolding lessons to account for student diversity in ways that would end up looking like I were running two different classes in the same room (been there, done that at least once).

To what extent is The Ethic tied to The Given? Can you systematize The Ethic, or will it always be changing?

As I implied, if we teachers of the world were to meet tomorrow and try to create a universal educational ethic, we would not spend much time talking about the differences in The Given of each of our specific situations. We would instead be primarily concerned with those educational practices that can adapt to any situation and are generally good to follow, assuming we share The Ideal. But in any situation where we would apply that universal ethic, we would have to take The Given into account. We would ask, “Given The Given, how might X educational ethic work better at this school, or in this class, than this one? How might Y be a more pertinent ethic to follow now while working toward Z?” The Ethic is always tied to The Given in practice, even if the situation is ideal like the one above. 

The Ethic, therefore, is indeed always changing in practice, though that doesn’t mean it cannot be systematized. It is definitely possible to create a universal educational ethic, a philosophical reference point for every teacher. But The Ethic that calls to each of these educators will be different based on their situation.     

What is the difference between The Ideal and an educational goal?

When I asked myself the question of whether I and the district actually shared educational ideals, and when I assumed they must also want the best for my kids, I concluded that they were simply confusing—or misprioritizing—an educational goal with an educational ideal. The Ideal might include graduation, but not necessarily good test scores. Good test scores are an educational goal, but not ideal for every student. The amount of time we teachers had spent on assessment analytics would have made an observer confused, believing that test scores were an ideal we were all striving for.

Educational goals are like stops along the way toward The Ideal. These goals are built into The Ethic and therefore vary depending on the situation. The Ideal, on the other hand, should not vary. A broader picture of an educational ideal could include the following: the student being made more intelligent, civil, compassionate, rational, and so on. Goals would include good test scores, positive parent-teacher conferences, student-created projects, and the like.   

What does discordance between The Ethic and The Ideal look like?

I already mentioned one possible problem between these two concepts: when an educational goal (like test scores), which should be part of The Ethic, gets confused as an educational ideal (like graduation). You don’t necessarily need one to have the other, and one is simply a stop on the road to the other.

Another possible issue is that some ethics are more appropriate than others for achieving a certain ideal. We might share The Ideal as well as The Given, but The Ethic you implement in your classroom might not be better for building confident students than the one I chose for mine. For example, you might choose to maintain a high standard of rigor (generally not a bad ethic to have) regardless of having students that come from desperate situations who therefore cannot meet that bar, while I make my standard more adaptable. Your students might shy away from future challenges, thinking they’ll never meet them, while mine might use whichever strategy they prefer to resolve them. This is why it is important that The Ethic respond directly to The Given. 

Finally, if The Ideal is inappropriate, The Ethic will end up being detrimental to teachers and/or students. For example, if The Ideal were mistakenly focused on good test scores, The Ethic might be to do whatever it takes to achieve that aim, including cheating. This is why it is important that educators agree on and share The Ideal and that it is appropriate and attainable.

Conclusions

First, for any teacher to be successful—that is, to have ethical practices and to lead their students to whatever The Ideal may be—they must account for the specific circumstances of their school and their students. No teaching practice is copy-and-paste, and no two students are the same.  

Second, The Ethic of a good teacher is something that can be extrapolated and made universal. Though no practice may be universally applicable, there are certain pedagogical dispositions that we may want all teachers to have. The project of creating such a universal ethic seems possible and appealing.

Third, we probably agree on many ideals of education, or at least there is probably great enough overlap that would allow for the creation of a universal ethic that would aim for them. My evidence here, though currently quite anecdotal, does point to the fact that everyone wants what’s best for our students, and that everyone knows that this includes things like making the students more comfortable in their own skin, confident in their own abilities, and committed to self-improvement. In this sense, we the teachers of the world have a good head start when it comes to the project of creating ethical guidelines that would help all students, regardless of their situation.

The purpose of this essay was to show one example of how an ethical approach to teaching can be had even in the midst of trauma, desperation, and a lack of resources and guidance. If it is possible here, it is likely possible anywhere. The decisions I made and the motivations I had cannot be applied everywhere, but the possibility of being an ethical teacher exists even in situations where it might seem impossible. Therefore, I believe the possibility of creating a universal framework for educational ethics exists, and though it requires much more than the contents of this essay, it is an appealing project that would be invaluable for generations to come.