This New York City teacher has been beaten down and out by ten years of reform that ended in more segregation and demoralizing actions by those at the top.
My advice to you: Don’t leave. There will be a new mayor. Maybe it will be someone who recognizes the damage of the past decade of endless and pointless reform and bragging. Stay and fight for the kids. Don’t let them push you out. Your students need you!
| After 10 years of teaching in NYC public schools, I’m quitting because I’ve become discouraged and can no longer deal with the upheavals that the so-called “reforms” bring to the everyday task of teaching. I’ve literally shed blood, sweat, and tears during these years of teaching at a school where the majority of the students live below the poverty line. Poverty Is the problem! NYC schools are segregated. How shameful that this is the case in this great city, and how unfair to students, teachers, and administrators. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If you leave, you still know everything that is going wrong, but can’t do anything about it.
I understand why you want to leave. Inside, felt extremely powerless. Outside, I was even more powerless.
I am now a fire figher, going back into a burning building, because what is inside is very precious.
LikeLike
I know how this teacher feels. I am in a 97- 99% free or reduced school-lunch district. It is discouraging to hear that it’s all on us. The most awful thing about the sudden disappearance of poverty as an explanation for at least some of what doesn’t go right for poor children isn’t what is happening to us. It is what will happen to them if our culture fails to begin to care about all its children.
LikeLike
We don’t leave, not by choice. The reforms didn’t beat me, it was the personal attacks, the weak union, the dirty tricks and ultimately illegal actions the union helped the district to carry out. The students always, always carried the days when I was a teacher. I never would have left by choice.
Sorry so dark, but it’s the honest truth.
LikeLike
Yep the dirty tricks and the racism, ageism, sexism, and horny principals will get you every time. And sometimes the unions are not good, they are almost as bad as the adminstrators. Consider starting your own charter.
LikeLike
Local district has pay freezes- three years so far with this to continue for the long term. furlough days ( 6 days), increased cost for the same benefits and more contribution costs for retirement ( mandatory state wide). This economic hit is also while no support staff- no secretaries, hall monitors, no copy paper/ink and class size has ballooned to mid thirties and up. (Even more time grading work at home- less time for family/self or even that part time job to cover the cost of living). Now with teacher evaluation shifts, more education- because Gates has weighed in on being more educated in the field wasn;t cost effective- does not mean anything at all. There is no way to increase a teacher’s salary at all and remain in the classroom and no incentive to actually gain more education to get even better in the classroom.
It is not cost effective for some teachers to remain in the classroom anymore. Cold hard economics.are going to lead to stagnation- attrition by a million cuts.
LikeLike
Add a certification. Go to self contained special education. Class sizes are limited by law. You will have a paraprofessional. Enjoy teaching kids who will love you to your very soul and who don’t take the tests. Wait it out. It will get better eventually
LikeLike
The local district does not give any more money for certifications and self contained classrooms are already oversubscribed for teachers as the spec ed reorg meant that many of them lost their spots.
This is also not a strategy that works for everyone- the problem lies with the lack of any foreseeable economic change for the positive for teaching profession- it is becoming economically untenable for people. At what point do we stop asking them to sacrifice themselves and their family/future economic stability and start asking the powers that be to examine their priorities with that variable in mind?
LikeLike
The kids need you. Inner city kids are great people, strong, resourceful, independent, loving, and beautiful. They need teachers who care about them and believe in them. They need teachers like you and not some enthusiastic robot. Go through the motions of what the politicians require and then close your door, cover up the window in it with a cute decoration, and TEACH.
You have to roll your eyes at the politics and go on and make your kids the best they can be in spite of the system. Teaching is a calling, not a job. You will not stop being a teacher just because that is not how you are making your money. Be the best influence you can be on the politicians and keep telling them that they need to do something about the poverty and the segregation and the achievement will come.
LikeLike
A good teacher can teach an alligator in a refrigerator box if she has to. Wait it out. It will get better. If you cannot stand it any longer, try to get a position in a self contained special education class—-moderate or severe/profound retarded. Love and teach the children and they will love and teach you. Class size is regulated by federal law and you will have a paraprofessional. Don’t leave the field. That is what the bad guys want. They want to replace the real teachers with TFA. Don’t go.
LikeLike
Sounds like New York needs a teacher in the Mayor’s house (apartment?—what do they live in up there? I hear housing is atrocious.) If the teachers found and supported one of their own it might result in some changes. Of course it would. Diane? Want to be mayor of New York?
LikeLike
10 years is what our students need! This wave of high stakes testing will change. Rheeform will backfire and I want you to bne around to enjoy a new decade of teachers who are again respected, honored and considered to have the noblest profession. Then YOU can have your cake and eat it too all the way to your retirement days. Trust me…a DC teacher hanging in there
LikeLike
I have been practicing mindfulness as a way of combating much of the stress I anticipate for the coming year.
I’m not going to overthink the coming year. It will unfold itself. No point in stressing what hasn’t happened yet.
One doesn’t know what’s coming. I’m starting my 13th year in pre-k in the same school. No one is going to push me out before I’m ready to go.
What I noticed at the end of the school year last year and over the summer is that the suits have no clue what they are supposed to do. They are working in the dark almost as much as we are. I will insist that they provide guidance for every initiative they want me to do and ask them to model for me. I will document every discussion we have. I intend to have a long paper trail.
And I will teach my students as though we are at Sidwell Friends.
LikeLike