Amy Prime, who teaches second grade in Newton, Iowa, noticed that many of the teachers she knows and admires are counting the days until they retire or quit.
She writes:
“If you teach, you don’t need to get online to read these thoughts. You hear them every day as you pass your colleagues in the halls, at sporting events, at church and in the grocery store. Teachers who are close to retirement crunch the numbers to see if they can make it financially if they leave a year or two earlier. Newer teachers wonder if the degree they earned in education might transfer to another type of job.
“If we don’t stop, take a serious look at what we are doing, and make a huge change, then we will have destroyed a noble and essential profession. This is not imagined. The attacks on teachers have been steadily increasing.”
Politicians and pundits overlook the root causes of poor achievement and blame teachers.
But, says Prime, we must not give up. Teaching is a great job, a great challenge, and every day is different. Besides, she writes, the people she works for give her hugs.
Her advice:
“To veteran teachers I say: Don’t go yet. You were here before No Child Left Behind. You were here before threats of unfair merit pay systems and micromanaging. We need you to remember the good that went on in schools then and fight for the return of those positive things. Your experience and wisdom cannot be replicated.
“To the young people who want to teach I say: Don’t be afraid. Join us. Teaching is a calling that can’t be denied. But be prepared to stand up and fight for what you know is right and good for kids. Don’t close your door and do your thing while hoping no one walks in to see that you’ve strayed from the script. Instead keep the door open and defend your good teaching practices when questioned.
“Fight for fun, creativity and laughter. Fight for art and music and drama in your room and in your district. Fight for smaller class sizes and for time to plan and prepare great lessons for your kids. Fight for better wages and improved benefits.”
Thank you, Amy, for good advice, for a vision of better days ahead, and for encouraging your colleagues to stand and fight for what they know is right for their students.
If you remain as a teacher, it’s essential to organize and fight back hard against the corporate takeover of education.
A single person can’t do much. But together, united with parents and students, we can do a lot.
Otherwise, retiring or not going into teaching at all make a lot of sense on an individual basis.
There in lies the problem. In my experience, teachers are too afraid to fight back. They do not stand up for each other. They would rather cower and hide than stand up for what is right. Unions have not been much help either.
Exactly, teachers tend to be caregivers not fighters and I’m sure the enemy is aware of that. The study of psychology has done many great things for us but it has also taught anyone who wants do defeat someone how to do it. Teachers are caregivers so paint them in public as someone who is hurting children, making school bad, guilt trip them into submission. Well I, for one, wasn’t a teacher first, I was a business person and we are fighters. We fight to get to the top, teachers just take classes and play nice and the enemy knows this.
We need to band together as ‘THE PUBLIC’. These are our schools, we paid for them as teachers, taxpayers, as former students, current politicians and billionaires do not get to steal them and sell us another, much shoddier, bill of goods. They do not get to ‘Walmart’ education. We need to stand up for what is right and good in this country, not just what the very wealthy want.
Great analysis.
I resigned from a previous position rather than fight. Although it was toxic for me there and good that I left, not fighting for what I know was right weighs on me still years later, and is my biggest professional regret.
That will not happen again.
Since a large percentage of teachers are women, sometimes I think that is why they have attacked teachers. If it were majority male like firemen and police would they still bash? I’ve seen a lot of retired teachers and current teachers who seem very complacent and don’t do anything to fight the reform movement. Many have decent pay and pensions and do very little. Why? Is it just fear or a shift in our culture?
People say we’re more narcissistic than ever. Is that why? Are we all just concentrating more on ourselves than for the good of the overall? I wonder.
When I taught 4th grade, I taught that there were service jobs and production jobs. They were different by design, and both were needed in any society. What happens when the service jobs disappear, becoming production jobs, because a few at the top think it will work? What you are seeing.
And to jaded- when standing up will cost you your job, and take away your ability to provide for your family, it is hard to stand up. Perhaps it just needs to happen all over, everyone joining hands like we did for “Hands Across America” in 1986, or like workers did in America so many, many years ago. Just a thought. It is very scary who SOME (not all) of our administrators are. To improve test scores, school boards need to start asking administrative candidates “How will you support your teachers, so they can teach our children?” Then if they don’t follow through, they need to be fired.
Nancy, I agree with most of what you said, except for we are now a “service job” country. We don’t produce anything. It’s not the service jobs that are disappearing, it’s the production jobs.
And most teachers won’t take a stand for fear of losing their jobs. I work in a “right-to-work” state, and have little job protection as is. If I were to rock the boat, I put myself in the crosshairs of the Educrats.
But yeah, we definitely need a “Hands Across America” moment.
I think it is a combination of things .. BUT being mainly women is a good and valid point.. regardless we need to stand together.
words of truth here! Many administrators are also feeling the corporate crunch and despising it, but have much less ‘perceived’ power since they are more in the belly of the beast. I am no longer thinking anyone should ride this out figuring it will pass. Even as teachers opt to leave (for any reasons) they should – indeed MUST – remain vocal in defense of children!
Nancy, if all in teachers in a district came together and said enough!, I do not think they could fire everyone! I’m tired of the “I’m afraid of… ” Maybe I’m a different breed. My family survived the holocaust and a similar mentality was taken then. You know, “just following orders”. Fear is an amazing emotion.
Yes, if everyone stands by then there won’t be a good jobs in education left. People who have never worked in a charter have no idea what could be coming their way. It’s not good.
Don’t the members of the Billionaire Boys’ Club realize that if they succeed in making teaching as unattractive as they seem to want to make it, they will also lose the pool of teachers available to the private independent schools their children attend?
A degree in a real major from a good liberal arts college gets you into a private school. They don’t depend on the pool of Ed school grads.
Please list the “root causes of poor achievement” and keep listing them
I advise students to NOT become teachers. Period.
I have worked in other professions for brief periods before becoming a teacher.
I don’t want others to be harmed by this toxic environment.
I too am counting down days and trying to retire early. I too advise young people not to become teachers at this time. I too am burnt out, overwhelmed and a lone voice often. I do remember pre NCLB, the start of the voucher movement etc. I recall what is was like to see children not widgets. I remember segregation and see the slippery slope to the days of the haves and have nots in education. I see parents who seldom question but often blame. I see teachers who should speak up afraid to do so…it is a toxic combo of behaviors. I feel disheartened and then I walk into the classroom…. I agree we need to unite and band together for change and stop the corporate mindset gripping and hope that blogs like Diane’s, Cody etc. I follow make the difference so needed.
I think we’ve got something here. Hands Across America II: To support public schools and teachers. Unlike the first one, we would want it in every state.
Here is the first Hands Across America:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_Across_America
Maybe NFPE could sponsor it.
Reblogged this on laartsedforum and commented:
One must really consider the role and purpose of education. (I promise I won’t go into all of that here.) Historically, that was preparing an educated citizenry capable of considering important issues before casting ballots. That is how democracy and our republic is preserved. In her post, Ms. Prime raises the issue of a full education.
Only in the last few decades has there been a desire to hyper-focus on college and career readiness. I don’t know the history of this phrase; however, I have to imagine that it has a double meaning and what “reformers” really meant to say indentured servitude, but that doesn’t have the same ring.
A full education helps students to live a full life, not just exist or survive. Education has turned itself backwards and the means to an education have become the ends. In English, if the purpose is only for students to decipher manuals and instructions, that is half an education. What about the actual act of creating poetry, short stories, novels, screenplays, and actual plays! Without an arts education, what do they have about which to write. The visual arts can inspire stories. Imagine one of your favorite landscape images and the stories that take place just over those distant hills. Dance provides new ways to communicate (describing it here will not do it justice).
But wait, no crayons for you.
There is an article out there that talks about the need for fun, focus, and energy (to that I would add consistency). It appeared in Basic Education in 2001. It certainly supports Ms. Prime’s recommendations to the profession.
Americans must insist on a whole education for a whole child. John Dewey tells us that which the best and brightest parents want for their children, that must we want for all children. A whole education not for some children, but all. We must be vigilant and active against the education-industrial complex. I close with an oft used quote by President John Adams – “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”
I would love to help organize something like Hands Across America. Thanks for the reminder and I agree it needs to be in every state if possible! Hands Across America ll . Let’s do it!
Last night I went to see a one-person play called The Amish Project, which dealt with the murder of the 10 Amish girls back in 2006. The discussion after the play turned to The Holocaust, and one of the audience members said, “Well, we live in a time when there are Holocaust deniers everywhere. I don’t know what people are being taught in school. It’s ridiculous that teachers aren’t addressing this.”
Well, that comment was wrong on a couple of counts. First, teachers in K-12 schools DO address the Holocaust, often at length in dedicated units of instruction. Second, there aren’t “Holocaust deniers everywhere.” There are a few outliers–nutcase antisemites–who hold such a view and make a lot of noise on the Internet, and most people ignore those crazies because they learned some actual history in school.
What interested me about the comment from the audience member was that it is an example of a widespread tendency to blame teachers for any and all shortcomings in the population. A customer encounters a clerk who can’t make change properly and decides that the country’s math teachers must be failing. An employer hires someone who uses poor grammar emails and decides that the country’s English teachers must be failing. People don’t think about all those clerks who can make change properly and all those employees who can use proper grammar in emails. They don’t say to themselves, gosh, there are lots of people who are skilled, and those people must have had good teachers. Problems stand out, and teachers are easy to blame.
To make matters worse, our press runs continually runs stories about “the education problem.” If international test results show American students doing a little worse than their peers in other countries are doing, that’s news. If an in-depth report shows that, corrected for socio-economic status, American students are near the top worldwide, that’s not news. If a teacher molests a student, that’s news. If a teacher kindles a spark of interest in a kid that grows into a fascination with, say, astronomy, that’s not news.
In such a climate, politicians, those panderers to popular manias and misconceptions, find it easy to target teachers. No one ever lost an election in the U.S. by being perceived as tough on crime. As a result, we have almost one percent of our population in jail or prison–shamefully, the highest rate of incarceration in the world. No one ever lost an election in the U.S. by asserting that he or she wanted to fix the education problem. As a result, we have politicians who are clueless about teaching mixing up magic potions like high-stakes one-size-fits-all standardized testing to cure education of its ills. This problem has become progressively worse as politics in the U.S. has become insular. Our politicians live in a separate political world, disconnected from everyday life. They eat, sleep, and breathe politics. They are not citizen-politicians who are primarily business people and soldiers and doctors and teachers and what not and who also serve, at some point in their lives, political functions. And because they are so disconnected, because they live in a world of meetings and media and polls, it’s easy for them to believe in the efficacy of magic potions, particularly if there is everything for them to gain and nothing to lose from touting magic potions to a populace ready and willing to blame teachers for every perceived problem.
Teachers and their unions need to start calling politicians and pundits out when they utter nonsense about how our teachers and schools are failing. Could we do better? Of course. But kids vary. Some will become scholars. Some will not. We would do well to remind people, often, that we attempt, in this country, to educate everyone, and that’s a job that will inevitably involve a lot of successes and a lot of failures.
If there is one reform that we could use in this country, it’s to recognize that kids differ from one another dramatically and that a complex, pluralistic society should not have a standardized school system that attempts to turn out a standardized product. Schools should work hard to identify the particular talents and propensities of every child and to provide opportunities for children to flourish in gardens in which they are meant to grow. This one could become a master of partial differential equations. That one could become a great taxi driver or house painter.
This sounds, Robert, like a recipe for charters with a variety of foci, and even vouchers, where parents might choose from an even greater variety of educations for their children. Or, conversely, an educational system such as Germany has where every person is expected to have a trade, no home schooling allowed, but the schools decide who goes on to university for the professions and other elites, and based on tests, others have to choose an apprenticeship. Which would be best for the USA? Freedom of choice and no guaranteed path to a job, or total regimentation but with a livelihood at the end of it?
“Freedom of choice and no guaranteed path to a job, or total regimentation but with a livelihood at the end of it?”
Since you identify those as the choices, which do you choose?
We don’t do either here, leave people free, or educate for production. I choose the way of freedom. By grit and some talent I survived. Not everyone is up to that, however. If you opt for freedom, you must accept failure.
The German way has its attractions if you can accept its regimentation. It’s stable, prosperous, but discriminates for intelligence. On the other hand, everybody has a respected job except the unassimilated immigrants. Germany’s rich, the rest of Europe is poor and wants Germany to bail it out.
We have the worst of both systems.
Good points, Harlan.
I agree with the freedom of choice, but with that comes consequences. In a true market economy, businesses have the freedom to fail (well, unless you are part of the one percent…then it’s socialism for you, capitalism for the other 99 percent). However, businesses failing is one thing, children choosing to fail is another. We’ve had children choosing to fail for far too long in this country. Our national graduation rates speak directly to this problem.
In North Carolina, for example, the graduation rates have recently gone up. Good, right? Not if you consider that instead of needing 28 credits to graduate (like the counties I’ve worked in which are local county decisions – the state only requires 21), most counties have dumbed it down to the state-required 21 since they weren’t graduating enough on time (NCLB mandates). For comparison, if you passed all of your classes from freshman year to senior year, you’d have 32 credits. Voila, graduation rate increases!!
I have a better plan, and one day I post the details on here, but I’d rather it be it’s own thread so as not to get lost in some obscure thread, since I’d like to hear opinions.
Amen, I think a lot of teachers have forgotten how to fight. We must stop accepting and holding out for a better day, that day can be now if we all fight for our professional right to teach not be test preparers. Yes, you are afraid but power will concede nothing without force and we are forcible advocates for children. Let’s be there for them.
Go ahead and “fight”; you’ll all be replaced the next day by people who will work for half your pay. You have no force. You are not even good advocates for children. You refuse to see that education is a business, and a badly run one in many places. Until you understand that being a government employee does not protect you from competition, you cannot be effective in defending your jobs. You do not have a right to a teaching job. No one does. You have a right to compete for students in the educational marketplace. That’s all.
“To veteran teachers I say: Don’t go yet. You were here before No Child Left Behind. You were here before threats of unfair merit pay systems and micromanaging. We need you to remember the good that went on in schools then and fight for the return of those positive things. Your experience and wisdom cannot be replicated.” I am quitting; I am retiring early. I’m almost 60 and for me to stay in this mess, hoping it will change, is unrealistic and frustrating. Once corporations, together with government, have taken hold of something, they don’t let go. I don’t see our education going back to the way it once was, which was good and nurturing and supportive of children. Our contract is up in June, and with all of the attacks on teachers, along with a superintendent trying to make a name for himself, it would be suicide for me to stay and teach – no telling how long it will be before we even get another contract, and I guarantee it won’t match the benefits we have now. And so, after 23 years of a profession that I was once madly in love with, I’m leaving early (taking a huge financial cut) because my heart is broken, I’m exhausted, and I can’t go on hypocritically acting as if what we are doing is right. I’m too honest to act that way every day and still maintain my own sense of dignity and self-respect.
I too fought the good fight….in the arts and foreign language even. But, with a “financial crisis” and a principal who hated me, all she had to do was RIF my job so that I had no choice but to take retirement (Thank God it was an option!). That was 3 years ago and it’s really gone to hell in a handbasket since then. There’s a limit on what can be asked of teachers who have already given years. I did 35. I have some guilt, but I’m working on other ways to advocate from outside the classroom now that won’t cost me my job, which I already gave. The river flows on.