HI GUYS! Its been a while since we've talked! 3 weeks almost I think! 3 weeks since Christmas break...dang...its been cold, snowy, wet, grumpy and rude. I'm not just talking about the weather. Im talking about me, the kids, other teachers, the kids......me......and the weather. This time of year is especially stressful for students and teachers. Testing. Testing. Testing. Its basically a curse word.....testing......it makes teacher's blood pressure rise which in turn cuts their patients in like half. So I am writing a letter to the education police, the people who make decisions and standards and rules for teachers. The people who may have never taught a day in their life, but hey! They know best.....
Dear Education Police,
Hi, I have some questions. Feel free to answer these at your leisure because, as I know (being a teacher) free time is hard to come by. I can only imagine you are visiting schools and collecting data and information on how well your policies are impacting the schools and more importantly the CHILDREN of America :) Anyways! I understand the importance of collecting data to insure that what you are doing is making a difference. I realize that there needs to be standards. I realize that. I get it. However. I have been running into the same problem over and over again and I hope you can help me come up with a solution. See, here is the deal, there is SO much data collection, testing and progress monitoring that I am struggling to find the time to actually teach? I don't know maybe this is silly.......but there are only so many hours in the school day, and I'm quite sure that we won't start keeping students at school until 8 PM. When I was in grade school, which wasn't long ago...Im only 26, I don't recall having to do all of this. I was a very observant child. I would remember. Somehow I learned, and so did my peers! We learned things! School was so fun! We had projects and were creative. Now in school I feel like students HAVE to learn so many things, and are required to meet so many standards that the joys of learning have been totally killed. How is this fair to them? How is it fair to their teachers? Personally I went into education because I LOVE to teach. I DO NOT love to collect data, analyze, test, stress over numbers, present data and monitor data. If I wanted to do that crap daily I could, somewhere else, and get paid more.....To actually teach to the best of our ability, teach everything we want/need to teach our children, and do all of this extra business, we need to have like 3 teachers in every classroom. THIS IS CLEARLY NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. First, because there are not enough people who want to teach which is sad. Second, there is not enough money. Which brings me to another point, our education system is completely crumbling. Failing miserably....we are cutting programs like the arts and forcing state testing on students. If you haven't noticed, its not working. Lets look back at the years where our education system WAS working. What are the differences? I am sure you will find some. We don't have money to fix these problems? Oh shoot.....you're right.....hmmmmm well fine. Let's just forget the education system because its not like these kids are the future of America. Lets keep spending money elsewhere and just cross our cute little fingers that we find some money in our couch cushions. So I would love to hear any useful suggestions you may have.
Sincerely,
A Frustrated Teacher
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