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Often teachers are pitted against each other in direct competition for teacher bonuses, giving further support to Eliza’s Survivor comparison. In some states, schools allocate various bonus amounts based on performance, but because each school has a limited pool of bonus money, one teacher’s gain is another’s loss. This system, like grade curving, does nothing to help foster a cooperative working environment. A Southwestern teacher told me, “I have seen teachers try to get students transferred into another teacher’s classroom or even call or email a teacher with a ‘pressing matter’ during that teacher’s evaluation. No one becomes a teacher because they plan to get rich, but a couple hundred dollars can make a teacher forget the reason they became a teacher in the first place.”

Just as student cliques can affect a student’s academic life, teacher cliques can impact an educator’s professional life. Teachers told me about cliques palming off extra lunch assignments, bus duties, and chaperone responsibilities onto younger coworkers eager to please. “I have seen cliques destroy some teachers. But the worst part about cliques among teachers isn’t about teachers at all,” said Phoebe, who taught in Arizona and Kansas, and blames teacher cliques for driving her to take a break from teaching. “Cliques can create a hostile environment that changes the entire climate of the school and directly impacts student learning. If teachers are uncomfortable in their own school, they will pass on their uncertainties or negative attitude to students. That is simply unacceptable. The students are the ones who suffer. Teachers are supposed to play for the same team. Educating students should always be the number one goal. Unfortunately cliques change the priorities for some teachers.”

Students know this. Several students told me about hostilities among teachers without my asking them. They overhear teachers talking about each other; one senior, for example, told me about the “teacher gossip frenzy” at his school. Some teens justify their own behavior by saying that teachers sometimes act even younger than students do. The kids aren’t wrong.

To students who worry that people never outgrow cliquish behavior, it’s important to point out that many—perhaps most—people do. Adult cliques are more likely to surface among teachers than among non-school professionals because it may be harder to grow out of schoolchild habits when one works in a school. Outside of school, adults—like Regan—are appreciated much more for their individuality. The school setting, specifically, can have this distressing effect on people.

Teachers who are members of cliques rationalize them by saying they need a select group of coworkers to complain to, that they are not exclusive, or that they are left out of other colleagues’ cliques. Tiffani, an Arkansas teacher, is a member of a teacher clique that calls itself a “secret sorority” and goes by the name TADA: Teachers Against Dumbasses. TADA meets occasionally after school to “get together over margaritas and vent about the administration, discipline, and anything else we deem necessary. We’ve even taken weekend trips, like to Memphis, where we hit all the bars on Beale Street!” Tiffani said. TADA claims to be inclusive because members put up signs in the copy room (TADA TONIGHT! 4:30 AT [THE BAR]!), but Tiffani admitted, “Most of us have been personally invited. A core group of us really stay together.” And wear pink TADA T-shirts. “When the students ask about our T-shirts,” Tiffani said, “we all say, ‘Oh, it’s just a teacher sorority!’ ”

Fall

Why Quirk Theory Works

Chapter 4

IN THE SHADOW OF THE FREAK TREE

When I asked students at one high school to describe their classmates’ labels, their attitudes toward those groups varied considerably—except in one instance. No matter the label of the person responding, the descriptions of the students who hung out by the “freak tree” were similar. “Eccentric, over-the-top, and pretty perverted,” said a