Retirement

Friday May 30, 2025

Another week, another trip. We’re on our way to San Diego for Lindsay’s mom, Linda’s, retirement ceremony. NSFL: This is a long one.

Linda has taught performing arts (among other subjects over the years) in Coronado, California, for 32 years and is retiring at the end of this school year. In this time, she has:

• Taught at all four schools in (on?) Coronado.

• Led 12 different classes and extracurricular programs.

• Directed 21 musicals, beginning with Bugsy Malone, a musical that was wildly popular in its time and virtually unknown today.

• Led more than 50 field trips to places like Balboa Park, Disneyland, The Pantages Theater in LA, and even Medieval Times, curiously enough.

• Organized literally countless community performances.

I’m guesstimating here, but given her many roles and that she works with pretty much all of the musically- or artistically-motivated students in the middle school, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that over 32 years, she’s worked with more than 4,500 students. Many of them still call her Mama K, even when they’re too-cool high schoolers or full-grown adults. I’ve seen it. I don’t think any teacher would claim a 100% success rate, but if you can measure a career in the number of times a graduated student calls you by a nickname, or jokes about you throwing your Pooh at them (Winnie-the-Pooh), Linda probably put up first-ballot Hall of Fame numbers.

That said, public education has changed profoundly in Linda’s time, and although I don’t want to speak for her, I suspect she is more than ready to leave.

Okay, now a BIG SIDEBAR.

My Auntie Bobbie — whose politics could not be more different than mine — and I managed to have a cordial and engaging conversation about education and “kids these days” this weekend. Neither of us changed our minds, but we were able to speak to and disagree with one another respectfully and even share a few laughs. You might have thought we’re friends, not family! She blames the union, I blame the parents, but whatever, we both agree that kids these days are screwed up, just like every generation thinks the one after them is screwed up. I think we deserve a round of applause.

But this is a medium in which you’re being talked at, not with, so I fully respect if you don’t want to hear my outrage over the way we treat teachers in this country. You know me. That’s probably enough to tell you whether or not you want to exit and come back next week. I am always happy to dialogue, and encourage you to express your own opinions in the comments or to me personally. But, like I said, you’re kind of in a hostage situation for the moment if you keep reading and if it’s gonna piss you off at me, I’m going to have no choice but to get pissed off right back because I gave you more than enough warning.

Okay.

You thought about it?

You’ve had 3 hours of the best of Gumby to think about it, you should know where you stand now.

Last chance.

Here we go.

I’m going to paint with a broad brush here, but that’s how we do it in the 24-Hour Media Age. Everything is nuanced, there is no black and white, there are no universal truths or ultimate moralities, I don’t hate America, I don’t think being conservative makes you a bad person, I don’t think the Republican Party is fundamentally evil, I do think the Democratic Party is a pathetic joke. I truly don’t think there is anything offensive in here, so please speak to me before doing or saying anything rash.

So. Whether you believe a coordinated, decades-long effort to erode trust in our institutions has severely impacted how Americans view teachers (I do), or you think teachers reading books with gay characters to kids has stained the profession (I do not), it’s fairly indisputable that Linda Kullmann is a dying breed.

To me, career teachers like Linda turning from fairly common even in the early part of this century to rare is one of the most concerning symptoms of a failing nation. (That’s as incendiary about the U.S. as I’ll get. No, I don’t only blame Trump. But that’s a topic for the political-minded sub-Substack: Truly The Nethermost Depths of Hell Newsletter.)

In 2022, 55% of teachers reported they expected to leave the profession earlier than planned, an increase from 37% in 2021. I expect that number is considerably higher today since 44% of new teachers leave within the first five years. The number one reason is compensation. Nationwide, the average public school teacher’s salary is $66,397. That’s a hair above national average, but it’s mostly carried by — shocker — states with the highest performing public schools, while 33 states pay teachers less than the national mean income and five pay them less than the state mean.

The other reasons include unrealistic expectations (Linda and Lindsay could both tell you plenty about that), poor leadership, and — the most baldly despicable one — their physical and emotional well-being.

Burnout is at an all-time high everywhere, but it’s particularly high among teachers. And, well, are you surprised? It’s not exactly the most enticing proposition to go into debt (which most people have to to become a public school teacher) to spend 30 years of your life in an occupation that subordinates you to unqualified and often under-educated school boards, administrators, parents, and literal children. Teachers are regularly spoken to like they have no idea what goes on in their own classrooms. They’re often branded ideological by parents who lack the accountability or self-awareness to recognize their hypocrisy. Parents who don’t value public education often have predictable behaviors: They tell their children what and how to think, accuse teachers of lying when their children misbehave or are violent to others, and cultivate in their children an intransigence and inability to engage with challenges or differences civilly. They raise their children to be like themselves: unaccountable, self-righteous, and utterly convinced of their particular worldview. They don’t know how to be wrong.

We live in an age when the people who claim to want to keep politics out of everything inject it into every aspect of their lives through an insatiable desire to be offended. (And proselytize.) And no, this isn’t purely a conservative or liberal thing — everybody today is desperate to be persecuted, except the actually persecuted. All they want is for you to watch their TikTok for nine seconds. Since school is the appendage of the State that most of us deal with, it’s the simplest place to manifest how oppressed you are. Teachers receive those grievances.

No, they do not actually get “3 months off” in the summer. They stay in school later than the kids do, and they come back earlier. Most get paid a fraction of their regular earnings in the summer, or get paid upfront (with their many deductions) and told to make it last until the start of school. Half need summer jobs to pay the bills. The other half become full-time caretakers for their children since they can’t afford daycare, take professional development courses to climb the salary ladder, or just plain recover from a level of mental and emotional burnout that none of us can properly contextualize. (The one or two times a year I visit Lindsay’s class for a few hours, I am exhausted after, and that’s when they’re on their best behavior for a guest.)

There’s an incredibly enraging and depressing thing I’m not going to mention, and it’s so obvious you already know what it is.

All this to say: Being an American teacher has become one of the most impossible, thankless professions in the developed world. Linda, ironically, is a perfect example of what all of us, especially the MAGA contingent, should want. We should want teachers (and tradespeople, police, firefighters, doctors, nurses, public defenders — anybody whose job is to help people) to feel valued and compensated enough to put in 30 years of exemplary service. (I don’t think she did always feel valued or compensated enough, but she at least rightly felt important enough to stick it out.)

I’m not convinced we as a people don’t want that. I think on a national scale we have a broken legislative system, a perverted moral compass, and literally no ethical standards to speak of, but I think that speaks more to the system put into place by the most powerful people rather than the voters who show up to volunteer at school events, chaperone trips to Disneyland, and tell their kids to shut the hell up when the teacher is talking.

Maybe it’s because I live in Massachusetts, where people are by and large sane, even if they don’t agree on everything. Maybe it’s because many of my own teachers are still in the classroom today. (Shoutout Mrs. Dyrek who I’m pretty sure is still teaching a 3rd/4th grade class at 71 and who was totally cool about me being high at an HHS girls’ hockey game when I was 17 lol.) Maybe it’s because a few of my favorite teachers were probably past their prime but refused to give it up. (Shoutout Ms. Silver, who actually is probably RIP by now :/) Maybe I’m naive. But I still have hope that we will one day make life easier for teachers, the people who don’t choose to do the thankless, abusive job of educating the next generation, but who are called to it by passion and selflessness. At least to the point that they’ll work until retirement and we don’t just lose what they have to teach us.

George Barnard Shaw is credited with the line “Those who can, do; those who can't, teach," but it has predictably been taken out of context over the years. He was talking about revolutionaries, not teachers; a fact I find hilariously on-brand when you consider how teachers have been deemed dangerously radical by conservatives.

Maybe this one should have been called “Teachers”. But I think it’s just a long-winded way of saying, Linda, you earned the fuck out of this retirement. Enjoy.

One Quote: “This is the new model, where you work in these plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.” - Howard Lutnick

Man, I promise I’m done with the politics after this, I just loathe this guy. He is the epitome of anti-American, plutocratic evil.

I’ve heard Trump administration people with liberal arts degrees in communication and politics say with a straight face on Fox News that Harvard’s federal funding should go to trade schools rather than “LGBTQ+ majors.” Never mind that six of Harvard’s top ten majors are STEM-related or that it’s one of the top research universities in the world and one of the most important assets we have in turning the world’s best talent into Americans. All that administration bullshit is just regular anti-intellectualist posturing that the Republican Party has pulled for decades.

But Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick says the quiet part out loud. They don’t want you to retire. They want you and your family to be dumb, pliant manual labor that is too broken from work to disobey, not intellectually curious enough to pursue upward mobility, and societally pre-conditioned to breed worker bees in the name of God and Country. “Bootstrapping” is for the born rich. Retirement is for the executives.

One Song: “New Realization” by Sublime

Okay, onto the fun because retirement should be fun. No, this song isn’t about retirement, but it is about turning a new page — in this case, by telling off an ex-girlfriend. It’s one of Sublime’s earliest tracks and is almost unrecognizable from their other music. It’s also just an absolute jam, and one of my favorite songs to start a windows-down summer drive with.

One Book: A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

This book paints a pretty grim picture of retirement and old age, to be honest, but the whole point is to bring it back to a place of joy. And then brutal, gut-wrenching sadness. Yay. I’m being silly, though. It’s an amazing book with a plain but provocative message: Life is never over until it’s over.

One Hack: Credit Card Point Transfers

Everybody knows about credit card points, but how much do you know about point transferring? I’ve only recently started exploring this and it’s a pretty ingenious travel hack. You can transfer your credit card points to airline or hotel rewards programs, and often get more bang for your buck — especially if you’re taking advantage of limited-time deals and offers. I saw one guy on TikTok book a $20,000 private island for like $3,000 worth of points by taking advantage of a Hilton bonus deal and exchanging credit card points into Hilton’s program. Here’s a good resource to see how exchange rates work.

One Hollywood: The Four Seasons, Netflix

Lindsay and I recently binged this dramedy about a year in the life of three couples on the verge of their golden years. After one couple gets divorced, it makes things incredibly awkward for everybody else, and yet they persist. It’s not ground-breaking or anything, but it’s reasonably funny and occasionally poignant.

One Musical: 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

No, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee isn’t about retirement. It’s almost like the opposite of that. But Linda has taken me to see Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, and Aladdin so it felt appropriate to just name a musical. The Book of Mormon is my favorite musical, but that feels too easy, so this is my second favorite musical and a better option to show you that I kind of know musicals. Which is important to me for some reason.