Nobody Blames the Plumber

Nobody blamed the mechanic when the engine seized. Nobody blamed the plumber when the sewer backed up. Nobody blamed Amanda when the hair turned gummy.

So why do we blame teachers when students make their own choices?

This episode is about accountability — who has it, who gets assigned it, and why teachers may be the only professionals penalized for the outcome of other people's decisions. It's also about a parent meeting that probably shouldn't have happened, a student sitting at ninety percent all year, and a dozen AP Seminar students who knocked on my door after their exam with the dam about to break.

Hi Emm. I know you're listening.

Through the Undertow. Episode 5: Nobody Blames the Plumber.

Transcript

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My father was a mechanic, my partner is a plumber. My longtime hairstylist is Amanda, and I'm a teacher. Between the four of us, we spent decades watching people ignore professional advice and then express surprise at the consequences. My daughter Emory, years out of high school now, has beautiful hair, but she once decided to dye her hair Easter egg colors. One color after another. And when she wanted a clean slate, she used color oops, which is exactly what it sounds like. A product designed to remove hair color and start fresh. She did this a few times, each time convinced that the next color would be the one that looked coolest. Amanda warned her, told her exactly what would happen. Em proceeded anyway, with that particular confidence of a teenager who has not yet learned that sometimes the professionals know something we don't. Her hair turned gummy, and then it broke off in places. Amanda foretold the outcome. Nobody blamed Amanda. The professional gave the advice. The client made the choice. The consequences followed accordingly. That's how it works in every possession every profession I can think of. Except one. Welcome to Through the Undertow. I'm Denine Fry. This episode is about accountability. Who has it? Who gets assigned it, and why teachers are the only professionals I can think of who get penalized for other people's choices. Let me ask you something. When your mechanic tells you to change your oil every 3,000 miles and you don't, and your engine seizes, do you blame the mechanic? No. You pay for the repair. She did her job. You didn't do yours. When your plumber tells you not to flush paper towels, and you do, and your sewer backs up, do you blame the plumber? No. You pay to unclog it. He did his job. You didn't do yours. When your dentist shows you how to floss, tells you to cut back on sugar and you don't, and you get cavities, does her pay get docked based on your cavity rate? No. You pay for the fillings. She did her job, you didn't do yours. When your physical therapist designs a rehabilitation program, demonstrates every exercise, sends you home with instructions, and you don't do the exercises, does he get evaluated on your recovery rate? No. He did his job. You didn't do yours. When your bariatric doctor prescribes a plan, explains the science, provides every support available, and you choose pizza over broiled fish. Does she lose pay because you didn't lose weight? No, she did her job. You made your own choices. The oncologist follows every protocol, administers every treatment, brings every tool of modern science to bear, and sometimes the cancer wins anyway. Nobody reduces her salary when a patient's treatment fails. She did her job. The outcome wasn't hers to guarantee. The transplant surgeon performs a flawless procedure, a textbook technique, perfect execution, and the body rejects the organ anyway. Nobody puts him on a performance improvement plan. He did his job. Biology made its own choice. And then there's teaching. In Pennsylvania and in many states across the country, teacher evaluations are tied to student test scores. Not lesson quality, not feedback quality, not differentiation or classroom management or the hundred small decisions a teacher makes every day to reach 25 different learners at a time. Student test scores. Scores that are influenced by whether the students had a comfortable place to sleep the night before, whether they ate breakfast, whether their parents are going through a divorce, whether their phone was in their bedroom the night before keeping them awake, or their video game console, whether they care about a test that has been excruciatingly taught to them for a year that has no consequences for them personally, but a significant consequence for their teacher professionally. Do they even know? I want to ask a genuine question, not a rhetorical one, a real one. Is there any other profession where the practitioner is penalized for the outcome of other people's choices? I've been thinking about this for a while, and I haven't found one yet. Story time. Her son is 18, a legal adult, old enough to vote, old enough to sign a contract, old enough in the eyes of every institution, except apparently this one, to be responsible for his own choices. You're the adult, the parent said at least twice. Yes, I am, and I'm in a room with 25 of them, all 18 or close to it, all making their own choices about whether to participate, contribute, follow through, and show up ready to learn. They choose to have a job outside of school, to play sports outside of the classroom, to be involved in other extracurricular activities. They choose to not complete assignments or to sleep during study hall because of those choices, or the choice to simply doom scroll TikTok videos instead. They make choices on how to use their time. The parent who said this to me has one adult child who chose his own group and came to me with his concern, received my advice, and left with a clear solution. Despite his group mates, his grade was protected. Google Docs doesn't lie. I know who exactly contributed what and who did not. What I didn't do was send a written confirmation of the conversation that had already happened in person between two adults. A conversation that resulted in a student who has maintained above a 90% in my class all year, including now. The system worked. The student's fine. His grade is fine. The meeting happened anyway. The meeting was not a conversation. It was an accusation delivered loudly, without, as far as I could determine, a factual basis for the accusation. I sat across the table and was told twice, at least, you're the adult. Yes, I am. I'm also the professional who handled the situation correctly, protected the student's grade, and left that meeting without a single answer to the question of what exactly I had done wrong. Nobody asked the plumber to justify himself when the pipes are fine. I've been reflecting on what I should do differently. And I think I've figured it out. I should document every conversation I have with every student in the hallway, before class, after class, during the 30 seconds between the bell and the instruction, every informal check-in, every word of encouragement, every piece of advice delivered in passing, all of it, timestamped, signed, filed, emailed. I have approximately 120 students, and um yeah, I'll get right on that. So what am I actually accountable for? I've been sitting with that question, and I think this week gave me the answer, from two directions simultaneously. On one side, a parent meeting where I was accused, berated, and told at least twice that I'm the adult about a student who has a 90% in my class and who's concerned I handled the moment she brought it to me. On the other side, a gifted IEP meeting where a parent voluntarily told the room that she and her daughter were very pleased with the rigor of my class and that she'd be writing a letter. Same week, same teacher, same classroom. So which one defines me? Which meeting captures what I'm actually accountable for? Neither both. That's the honest answer. What I'm accountable for is this. In the weeks leading up to the AP seminar exam, I taught the format of the test. We studied an exemplar together. I used a scaffolded piece practice tool to guide them through their first attempt. They practiced in groups, they did it independently. I scored every written response with the actual AP rubric, not an approximation, the real one, and returned it the next day. One day turnaround on a full class set times three classes. The students had the chance to revise. I regraded the revisions, another one day turnaround. Before we moved on to part B. Same drill, same rigor, same feedback cycle. That's hectic. I won't pretend otherwise. Grading three full class sets of written responses overnight is not a small thing, but it was essential because feedback on a timeline that actually matters is the difference between practice and preparation for an important exam. I built the scaffold, I provided the feedback, I created every possible condition for success. And then a dozen students knocked on my door after the exam. It was my prep period, the last period of the day. I was sitting in a slightly darkened room, winding down, preparing for the week ahead. I saw them through the rectangular window in the door before they knocked. About a dozen smiling faces. It took me a moment to register what I was looking at, and then I jumped up and opened the door. I asked the group, so how was it? And the dam broke. They were prepared. It wasn't as hard as they thought an AP test would be. The synthesis materials were easier than the ones I'd given them from our Lord of the Flies unit. The Robert Frost poem on the exam was simpler than the Wilford Owen poem we practiced with. They had seen harder. I had made sure of it. And after they were done gushing about their victory, I invited them in. I grabbed the brown basket that I keep on my desk, dumdums, for a variety of reasons. And I passed it around. A basket of dum-dums for students who just proved they were anything but. That's what I'm accountable for. The mechanic doesn't get evaluated on whether you changed your oil. The plumber doesn't get evaluated on whether you flush paper towels. The oncologist doesn't get evaluated on whether the cancer listened. But I did get evaluated this week by the ones who really count. The students who took the exam and felt prepared. That's not a test score. That's not a parent meeting. That's not a line on an evaluation form. That's what I'm accountable for. The scaffold, the feedback, the overnight regrades, the exemplar, the practice, the harder poems that the real one would feel easier. The brown basket of dum dumbs on a Monday afternoon when the dam broke. In the water. Not the swimming. Through the undertow. New episodes every two weeks. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. And if this episode meant something to you, send it to one teacher who needs to hear it. That's how this spreads. Not an algorithm. Word of mouth. The old fashioned kind. See you in the water.