15. The Catholic High School

The Catholic High School

The Catholic high school got back with me.  The fact that I asked if it was OK that I am not Catholic made the Assistant Principal smile, she said. 

I wasn’t joking – I was checking.  I told her about the other religious school that didn’t want an LDS teacher.  She was not amused, and sent the following:

“Well, the Lasallian tradition is inclusive, it started out as a way to help poor kids, but did such a good job that parents who could afford to pay for school wanted their kids to go there.  Originally all the schools were free; that’s long gone, but we put a huge amount of money into tuition assistance to avoid becoming another private academy with some scholarship kids.  Staff hiring is based on academic credentials.  The Archdiocese requires that the principal and Religious Studies teachers be Catholic, but beyond that we don’t care.”

I’m pleased knowing that I’m not too religious, or I’m religious enough, to teach science after all.  I think I would love to teach there.

But they are still too far away to justify commute expenses (115 miles) when compared to after-tax salary.

We chatted online back and forth a little bit, this Assistant Principal and I.  She told me the harrowing story of her own daughter’s quest to be a teacher.  Her daughter has courageously prevailed and has her own classroom now, but not without years of ridiculous bureaucratic and autocratic challenges along the way.  Crazy.  How many others are trained to teach students and aren’t able to?  


Yet the call continues to go out, “We need more qualified teachers!”    

She sent me this quote:

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.

Mohandas Gandhi