Sept. 11, 2003 - Welcome to the website of a very disgruntled teacher! I taught at a public middle school for many years. For the first couple of years that I taught, I truly loved what I was doing. Then a few years ago, every school in our county was bombarded by model classrooms, standards, focused walks, school grading systems, state assessments, and every other sort of imaginable micro-management. Meanwhile, the students were basically given license to roam wild and free, under the belief that if the school failed any of the above-listed tests, it just had to be the teachers' fault, not the students.
I hung in there for as long as I could, thinking that things would get better. The final straw was when I was trying to get an unruly class under control by having them silently read books for the better part of a particular class period. An administrator came in to do a cursory evaluation and was annoyed that every time this person observed my class, this person saw the students "doing nothing but reading in class." This was the first instance I've ever heard of where it was considered unethical for students to be reading in a classroom!
I left that job. And just this week, I tried teaching at a small private school (at one-half of my previous salary), where my classroom consisted of only five students. Unfortunately, they were all special-ed, an area in which I am not certified and was evidently poorly equipped to handle. After one unruly student caused me to have two parent-teacher conferences in a single 24-hour period, the student, who was supposed to have been suspended for one day, returned to class without penalty and continued to act up. When I tried to send her out of class, she replied, "So what? All that'll happen is that my mom'll come back up here to talk to you again!" At that point, I thoroughly and hopelessly agreed with the young girl, and I walked out on that classroom after serving for only two-and-a-half days.
Does anyone have any idea why it has come to this? When in the world did the school system get so politicized and dysfunctional? Which educational genius decided it was okay for students to use the same kind of verbal and physical abuse towards their teachers that would have gotten you or me punished by the principal and by our parents? When were administrators allowed to move authority away from the teachers and towards any feel-good system that happened to be sold to the school board at the moment? And why are the few new teachers who get into the system forced to jump through endless hoops in order to maintain just a minimum of what the school system requires of them?
I invite you, the reader, to maintain an ongoing debate on this and any other teaching-related topics. Please E-mail me here to express your comments. Unless you otherwise tell me so, I would like to publish your comments verbatim at this site, though I will be glad to keep your name and E-mail address private. Please offer your comments on some of these very vital issues!!
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