Peter Greene observes that there is a burgeoning number of “I Quit” letters by teachers. It has become a genre of its own. But he wants the world to know that he is not quitting.
Here is how his “I don’t quit” letter begins:
Dear Board of Education:
Just wanted you to know that I am not going any damn where.
Yes, a lot of people have worked hard to turn my job into something I barely recognize, and yes, I am on the butt end of a whole lot of terrible education policy, and yes, I am regularly instructed to commit educational malpractice in my classroom.
But here’s the thing– you don’t pay me nearly enough for me to do my job badly, on purpose.
I’m not going to make children miserable on purpose. I’m not going to waste valuable education time on purpose. I’m not going to teach them that reading is a miserable activity with no purpose other than to prepare for testing. I’m not going to tell them that these big stupid tests, or any other tests, or grades, even, are an important measure of how “good” they are or how much right they have to feel proud or happy or justified in taking up space on this planet. I’m not going to tell them any of that.
Most of these new education reform policies are wrong. They’re bad pedagogy, bad instruction, bad for students, bad for education, and we all know it. I am not going to spend another day in my room pretending that I don’t know it.
Am I God’s gift to teaching, so awesome that I never need to listen to anybody about anything? Not at all. It’s a big, wide, complicated world, and I’ll listen to anybody who thinks they have something to share about how children can be educated.
But here’s the thing. I am a teacher. I am an education professional. I trained to do this job, and I have never stopped training and learning since I started on this path. This is my world. This is the work that I committed myself to. I live here, and that means I know more about this work than the edu-tourists just passing through.
Read it all. It will remind you that teaching is a noble profession, and that this is a time to fight off the barbarians and stand strong for what you know is right.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m not quitting either. I’m not leaving education in the hands of those dumber and less experienced than me.
Good for him. The fewer teachers who can say “college ready” with a straight face in parent-teacher conferences, the better.
TAGO!
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Wow. What a letter. Kind of reminds me of when a giant wave, a wall of water, hits you at the beach. A wall of words. Well done, Peter. And, I especially love the line, “If you find this not-very-team-playery of me….” Actually, I’d certainly want my own children to be any team YOU coached!
Interesting comment from a response by someone named Muddy. I’d take it more seriously if the person had the balls to use his/her own name. As it is, seems like a middle school playground taunt.
That’s some slick bait Muddy has put out there for Peter, and any other non-quitters, to try to clamp down on.
Actually, “charter schools” and “choice” immediately came to mind in response to Muddy having written: “As you must be painfully aware, people (adults and young people together) have created school communities where the children have full control of their education, are fully empowered.”
Duane Swacker: forgive the presumption, but a little editing tip…
“As it is, seems like a middle school playground taunt” should read—
“It is a middle school playground taunt.”
Just took out a few words. IMHO, more accurate. And if I may add, the lengthy comment by Muddy[TheWaters] is just about as meaningful as a recent zinger in an LATIMES editorial: “Neener-neener.”
Apparently someone has been feasting at the word salad & cognitive dissonance section of the Rheephorm 99¢ Store.
Not a good idea for body, mind or soul.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
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“I’m not going to teach them that reading is a miserable activity with no purpose other than to prepare for testing.”
Thank you Peter for that.
“Most of these new education reform policies are wrong. They’re bad pedagogy, bad instruction, bad for students, bad for education, and we all know it. I am not going to spend another day in my room pretending that I don’t know it.”
This is all true except the “we all know it”. Many teachers have accepted the reformers’ definition of good teaching. They warmly embrace the travesty of real education known as the Common Core wherein school is reduced to a tedious version of Lumosity brain training, wherein literature, history and other content is reduced to mere grist for the brain training drills. The prize for toiling in these mills? Not enlightenment or edification or a well-stocked mind, not awareness of the world and possession of the story of humans, but Complex Text Reading Ability and Ability to Support and Claim with Evidence (an elusive prize: these methods are actually fruitless). The reformers are barbarians who stormed the gates of the academy, but they would have gotten nowhere if they hadn’t been abetted by legions of teacher collaborators. And why were so many teachers willing to collaborate? I blame the education schools for failing to fortify their pupils’ minds with a solid intellectual foundation.
“And why were so many teachers willing to collaborate?”
Because they fear fear itself. And most are fairly conservative folks not like the contemporary meme that they are lefty pinko socialist union thugs. One usually doesn’t teach if one doesn’t believe in perpetuating society, mainly as it is, that there are many good things to be obtained in a well ordered society. Most tend not to be shit-disturbers, even those of us that challenge the status quo (no, not THE Status Quo). We believe that one of the highest human activities is to learn and do things we haven’t learned or done before.
But the main factor is fear. Fear that compels the vast majority to kowtow to authority and implement the many educational malpractices we witness today. Those teachers are a spineless bunch of cojoneless GAGA*ers-Going Along to Get Along not rocking the boat even though it’s ethically sinking into the abyss..
*Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformers agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution** upon their passing from this realm.
**Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to go along to get along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
I like your channeling of Dante, Duane. I agree that some collaborators are GAGAs who ought to know better, but I think many sincerely believe that Common Core is good. They lack a well-formed ideal of education against which to compare the Common Core dreck. And they lack a vivid imprint in their minds of the various “authoritative” orthodoxies in history (e.g. Ptolemy’s geocentric model) that have been utterly wrong despite wide-spread acceptance by the authorities of their day. These teachers have a hard time distinguishing between “popular” and “correct”. They never conceive that they themselves could be the modern day Galileo that braves popular scorn to debunk a popular opinion –in part, perhaps, because they’ve never learned the Galileo story well. These are some of the endowments that a good education gives you; many teachers, it seems to me, did not get a good education.
Well stated Ponderosa!