Return on Investment

10.02.10 By Neema Avashia

Sometimes in the fall, my workaholic nature really gets to me. Driving home late at night after 14 hour days, I lecture myself: It’s not enough that I do one 70+ hour a week job as a middle school Civics teacher. No, in addition, I also feel the need to teach a year-round graduate history methods course, and help run a start-up non-profit that supports 8th and 9th grade students through the transition to high school, and play call center for former residents and former middle school students. And the curse of it all is that I never feel like I’m giving enough to any one piece. When I’m teaching my middle schoolers, I feel guilty that I’m not spending more time on my residents. When I’m teaching the residents, I feel guilty about what I’m not doing for my middle schoolers. When I’m working with either set of current students, I feel bad that I’m not able to fully support the students who’ve moved on. And when I’m working on any piece of this, I feel bad about the time I’m not spending doing those ordinary, relaxing end-of-day activities that normal people seem to do (you know, like actually cook dinner on a weeknight).

It’s a fairly unhelpful state of mind to be in. But this year, my grousing has really been minimized by the fact that I’m starting to fully reap the benefits of being a BTR B.C.E. (Before Cohorts Existed—none of this “Cohort 1” stuff for me!). There are three amazing BTR graduates teaching history at my school, two of whom I actually taught as residents in years past, and I get to plan with them, refine instruction with them, problem-solve with them, and celebrate with them on a regular basis. My former history residents, numbering close to 20 at this point, are spread all across the city, doing amazing work in their classrooms, and some of them actually teach students who were 8th graders in my room last year. Let me tell you—there’s some serious joy in than hearing that on the first day of school, a 9th grader finished his history class and, slightly puzzled, asked his teacher, “Do you know Ms. Avashia? Because your class really reminds me of hers.”

I suppose it’s not healthy to justify workaholism, but perhaps you’ll understand my addiction when you start to think about the return on investment. Some people measure their success in terms of wealth. I think my measure for myself is in number of kids impacted, and that’s a figure that, even in the worst of economies, just seems to keep growing and growing and growing.