Austin Texas High School Art teacher Tamara Hoover is on the road to the unemployment line after exposing her fun-bags on the interweb, well, sort-of. The story is that her girlfriend (a photographer) took some candids of Tamara in real world scenarios, some without Tamara’s clothing and/or knowledge and posted them, among others, on her flickr.com page. The school board in Austin says they are pornography, Tamara and all her male students and their fathers seem to disagree. This makes me want to talk about teaching as a career choice.
When was the last time a teacher was fired for anything other than gross incompetence or molestation? Well, in areas of the country that have abolished slavery that is. If you or I screw up (assuming you aren’t a teacher) at our job, say loose an account or blow something up, you would get fired…right? or at least punished for what you did. I think the punishment for high school teachers is that they have to eat lunch at the loser table for a week.
Why didn’t I become a high school teacher? I’m pretty lazy and don’t like to do much of anything unless I have too or it makes me happy to do so. Its human nature, people chose the paths that offer them the greatest reward for the least amount of effort. I am not particularly good looking, not terribly athletic, or a super-genius, I have had to work hard for just about everything, as most people do. So why didn’t I just go to a local college and study education and when I graduated, get a job at the very high school I attended just four years earlier like so many of my fellow classmates? Good question, and one that on the surface may seem easy enough to answer, but its not. The virtues of teaching high school include working just minutes from home, starting work at 7:30 am and ending at 2:00 pm, not having to shave or look all that presentable for work, among other things. Those other things include decent pay, benefits, job stability, vacation time up the ass, not having to work weekends, long hours, summers or holidays, and a flexible daytime schedule. Also, there are no actual people to deal with, just students and professional students (other teachers) who can be annoying but don’t cause any actual problems or stress. High school teachers also have the ability to have a second career alongside or just sit on your ass three of the nicest months of the year. Oh, and don’t forget those hot senior girls who will graduate soon and be even hotter college girls and will be socially acceptable to start dating them, all of them, at the same time.
Ordinarily I might say that professors have it good too, up there with high school teachers but they don’t, they have to at least get a masters degree and preferably a doctorate of philosophy, and I had professors who had multiple PhDs. What’s the most a high school teacher HAS to have, Bachelors with continuing education courses each year? Professors don't get paid too well and tenure positions are hard to nail. It sounds to me like I made an error in judgment about five years ago, instead of getting up at 5:00 to trek to Boston to go to work I should be riding my laurels for the rest of my life as a high school history teacher.
Although, there are the obvious social aspects of never actually leaving high school and living the four years spent there, over and over and over again. Oh, and hating my life would suck too. So, Ms. High School Art teacher may have made an error in her decision to teach in Texas, but I think you will agree that art teachers and artists (which Tamara is both) should be able to express themselves even if it is on the Internet. Anyone should for that matter, without the risk of losing their livelihood, especially when it fits into the mold of their lives. I’ve seen the photos, and encourage you to see them, and I don’t find them offensive. They, in my opinion, aren’t porn, but I don’t get to determine whether or not she loses her job over them so I suppose it doesn’t matter what I think. I just like saying fun-bags.
