Rants Never Spoken- Repost.

I posted this blog yesterday after a very, very long and disheartening  week. This morning, I removed the post, which I am now reposting.  One of the commenters to the post was a former student of mine, whose identity was anonymous. That student's  comment inspired a response that was unfairly polarizing, and I felt, not conducive to a real discussion. There’s no point in attacking people because they misspell a word or use a misplaced modifier. There’s also no appeal to pathos here- I am not asking for anything- I like my job. I love my students. I like my administrators. Much of this is out of their hands.  

 Frankly, this post  was not meant to start a  discussion.I am merely posting my thoughts. It's just me, ranting to the clouds because I am frustrated with the direction public education is taking.  Here is the post in it’s entirety.

Dear ____________,

You must know by now that there is an epidemic. An epidemic of counting days till summer,  days till retirement, days till another career can be had. Out of the five colleagues I chatted with today, four are thinking of leaving the profession. These are teachers with nearly 10 years apiece in.

Most of us don’t mind giving up time, squeezing in an extra hour or two after school or coming in on Saturday. Most of us show up to the conference days hoping we will actually talk about something that will help kids. Instead we are treated to instructions on how to test kids, how to test kids more often, how to analyze data, enter data, collect data. The only thing this data will do is make some politician -whose kids go to private schools- look better when they run for re-election.

The president wants us to test kids more often- 4 times a year instead of once or twice, so we can help the testing companies and their consultants make money selling tests, curriculum and other programs to schools.

The governor wants to break our union so we can go back to earning $30,000 a year with no benefits, which will cause many of us to take second jobs so we can pay off our student loans.

Our administrators want us to get every child to pass, develop “relationships” with students, and gather data on everything we do. We are supposed to help grow every child’s individual strengths and strengthen their weaknesses, while keeping the group in cohort so they can be measured for school statistics. Oh, and make learning fun.

Most of us went into teaching because we like kids. And the kids are why we stay: the girl who asked “How are you doing?” after taking a day for bereavement leave. The kids that are so passionate about a topic that they stand up in class to make a point. The shy kid who finally smiled and started talking. The immigrant’s kid who stays after every Tuesday to learn to write better.  The kids who have nothing waiting at home but trouble, and want to stay after because it’s safe here.

We have been called lazy, stupid, self-serving rubber-room dwellers by the public, and nobody stands up for us. Not parents. Not administrators. Not politicians. We are the whipping posts for the New Economy: educated, salaried, benefited. We are an anachronism in the New Economy.

We wanted to teach them something important, like how to appreciate a story, or how to write well, or how to calculate geometry or learn a foreign language. Instead, we are short-tempered, frazzled, dehydrated, stressed. We loathe the new regulations, but we loathe what we are becoming more: apathetic. You tell us we are worthless often enough, and we will start to believe it. Good teachers will leave, and something valuable will be lost. 

And then we will have a crisis in education.