About 10 years ago the age of 35, I realized that I had become a teacher in spite of myself, and although I had already been doing the job for ten years, I finally and wholeheartedly committed to the calling.

How such paradoxes are possible has something to do with my generation.

Growing up in the heyday of the women’s movement was confusing, and by heyday, I do mean the 70s.  No doubt there are some former bra burners out there (with their bosoms hanging down to their belly buttons) who would say that women’s liberation began to peak earlier than 1970.  Nevertheless, the “movement” was certainly on my childhood radar, but perhaps not for the reasons you’d expect, and certainly with plenty of static disrupting the signal.

 Women’s Lib was not on my radar because there were Ms. magazines fanned out on the family coffee table next to the cluster of avocado green resin grapes.

 The movement was not on my radar because my mother was a high powered political activist, or a sexy policewoman, or even a house wife holding consciousness raising sessions every Tuesday night in our living room (the sort Katherine Ross tried to run in ‘The Stepford Wives’).

In fact, in many ways, the women’s movement infiltrated my childhood radar in spite of all the signals I was receiving from the people in my household and suburban neighborhood.  My mother was a traditional housewife, apolitical in general, and my father expected dinner on the table every evening when he arrived home from work.  I can only remember one mom on our whole block who had a career.  Her daughter, a friend and latch key kid, had already earned a reputation for being wild and unsupervised by age 9.

So what made me aware that women’s liberation even existed?  Television. 

 Here, I don’t mean episodes of my favorite show, ‘The Brady Bunch,’ where Marsha’s most difficult struggles involved such travesties as disguising a broken and grotesquely swollen nose before a date (or was it cheerleading tryouts?).

 Women’s Lib first came to my attention because of a nationally televised professional tennis match, the one between Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973.  I can still hear the chorus to the theme song chosen for the broadcast:  “Anything you can do, I can do better.  I can do anything better than you.”  Billy Jean King accepted a 55-year-old former male champion’s smug challenge and defeated him. 

For me, King’s victory in this epic battle of the sexes heralded a provocative shift in the universe and the way I thought about my place in it.  Post Billy Jean King, the nation truly began to believe that women could meet any challenges they wanted to, not just those society traditionally deemed appropriate female pursuits. 

Even my somewhat Archie Bunker like father seemed to agree, and he took great pride in the fact that I could beat all the boys at school in running races.  I remember him clocking me with a stop watch on the nearby high school track, trying on the fantasy that he might have a future Olympic champion on his hands.

 My growing faith that women could outperform men and excel in whatever they wanted was reinforced by edgy TV sitcoms.  In ‘All in the Family,’ Edith Bunker’s cousin Maude had no trouble telling Archie where to stick it.  And Maude’s reward?  Her own spinoff.  Notably neither Edith nor her daughter Gloria ever got their own shows.  They cried too much.  They were still just the women behind their men. 

 Samantha Stevens of “Bewitched’ was a little more subversive, but even she kowtowed to Darren’s wishes and reserved her magic for emergencies. (Yet wasn’t it obvious that it was Sam who invariably saved the day and Darren’s job with an eleventh hour idea for the perfect ad campaign?)

 Most significantly,‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ though not so edgy as ‘All in the Family,’ certainly promoted the idea that a woman could be single, focused on a career, and quite fulfilled in a workplace surrounded by men. And ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ is where I must transition into what seventies TV has to do with my perception of teaching as a woman’s movement. 

 Mary was clearly not only the moral compass, but also the common-sensical earth mother of WJM.  Her worst offense was having the audacity to develop an uncharacteristic case of the giggles at Chuckles the Clown’s memorial service. 

Mary Richards was no Mary Poppins, no saint.  She was human, but her job, it seems to me, included a lot more than what we might have read in her job description.  Without Mary at the station, who would keep Mr.Grant from killing Ted Baxter?  Who would keep Ted from making a total ass of himself and destroying his relationship with Georgette?  Who would serve as foil for the repulsive sexual aggressiveness of cooking show diva, and resident bitch, Sue Anne Nivens?

 In short, no one.  WJM needed Mary Richards.  She was the role model, the leader, the protective parental figure, the voice of reason, a.k.a. the TEACHER reigning in all the other characters and keeping the station on track. Mary was not unlike a school marm in a one room school house of adult children. 

 I leave Murray Slaughter, the news writer played by Gavin MacCleod, out of this list of Mary’s student figures above for a reason here.  Murray reminds me of many of the great male teachers I have known over a lifetime.  He was Mary’s co-pilot and partner in common sense.  But Murray always seemed a little bit disempowered to me, and not only because he was average looking and bald. 

Murray worked not only for Mr. Grant, but also for Mary, whose title was “producer.”  Murray seemed to have made a choice to content himself with less, to do what he loved (write the news) rather than climb the corporate ladder of the network. 

 He was clearly smarter and more morally cognizant than either Ted Baxter or Mr.Grant, but for whatever reason, he never demanded a promotion or a higher salary.  Perhaps as a result, he seemed a bit demeaned in self-concept and social status, not unlike a lot of male educators I know, unless they have risen to the stature of principal or Phd.  (Gavin MacCleod himself went on to play the role of Captain Stubing on ‘The Love Boat,’ yet even then, it was pretty hard to take him seriously in his navy whites and knee socks.)

 You may be surprised to hear that I’m not so unlike these Murray-like male colleagues of mine. I’m no principal or Phd. either, though at various times I have considered and rejected both career paths. Here I need to repeat--I am a teacher, a high school English teacher, and proud to be so in spite of myself. 

 Notions of the women’s liberation movement formed during my seventies childhood led me to conclude that there were three things I never wanted to be when I grew up: a secretary, a nurse and a teacher. These were jobs for women of old.  After Billy Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs, it was my duty as a female to become something more bold and devastatingly important.  In fact, at one point, my list of future plans included all of the following, and in this order: 

1) Earn a full ride academic and athletic scholarship to college.

2) Win an Olympic gold medal for the 100 meter dash.

3) Become a professional comedian and lawyer.

4) Get married and have seven children.

5) Finally, become the first woman president of the United States of America. 

 Even when I was old enough to realize that this grocery list of goals was a bit unrealistic for one human being, I had a vague notion that I wanted to become someone like Mary Richards, not necessarily a newswoman, but certainly not a school teacher.  

That’s because as a child, I didn’t really grasp why Mary Richards was a beloved pop cultural figure--not just for being a single career woman in the heyday of the women’s movement, not just for being damned pretty, but for something else less obvious and more deeply satisfying.  Down deep, the country loved Mary Richards for embodying all the virtues of a school marm embarking on an adventure into the wild west.  As a child, I didn’t get that she was a new age teacher in a grown up school room. 

 So why do so many 21^st century teachers, male or female, still sometimes feel a bit like Murray Slaughter? Bald, average looking and somewhat disempowered given their smarts and skills?  It’s a gender bending but important question, complicated and getting more complicated all the time.

 Many young women and men who chose to become teachers in this day and age have something in common with Mary, Murray and those school marms of old, “lighting out for the territory.” Like Mary and even some of those old school marms, today’s young teachers are carrying the torch of the women’s movement. They are choosing a career not out of a sense of what society tells them they should do based on traditional gender roles and salary scales, but based on a sense of calling, love of learning, and undying service to country and its young people.  And hell yes…they want to be mothers or parents of sorts.

 Now just as it always has, chosing to be a teacher takes true grit, but not exactly the kind John Wayne had as Rooster Cogburn.  Everyone knew John Wayne was bad ass because he carried a gun.  Only a few knew he had true grit because he risked his life out of a sense of duty, decency, and honor.  Men and women who choose to become teachers today have true grit because, out of a sense of duty or calling,  they accept a low paying job and ambiguous social status relative to the hours, education, talent and dedication required to do their job well. 

 Paradoxically, if you are known for teaching well, almost everyone will thank you and respect you for your work, but in the tradition of Murray Slaughter, no one will really want you to demand a raise or a promotion.  

There’s an analogy I’d like to propose here. Would we ever offer our mothers (or fathers) merit pay?  Or would we simply hope they would do good work out of a sense of intrinsic reverence for their job?  I would posit that teachers are no different than our mothers or fathers, and down deep, America knows it.  Perhaps this is why teachers’ unionizing efforts are continually a target for attack.  Do we really want teachers with Wall Street ethics?  Or is there a certain sanctity about the profession demanding more than profit as the primary motive”

 Ironically, it’s the very fact that, as teachers, we love young people and have a passion for guiding them that makes our society expect us to do it for no or low pay. To this day, teaching is a female dominated field in our country, despite the many Murray’s willing to be our co-pilots out of love for the job. Thank God for the Murray’s.  

 The fact that there are still so many more Mary’s than Murray’s in American schools, however, is a fact we as a nation should examine more carefully than we do.  There’s a women’s movement, with both male and female members, going on right under our noses this very instant.  As Americans, we both love and financially undervalue our teachers for the same reason that we loved Mary Richards.  She was our teacher even when she might have chosen to leave the station and become something else (Oops…wait a minute…If I remember correctly, in the final season of show, she did exactly that). 

 Countless numbers of educators, irrespective of gender, could have chosen to do something else, but they have followed their calling instead.  We need to notice and celebrate that, even if we can’t bring ourselves to pay for it.