Tim Slekar, dean of Edgewood College in Wisconsin and consummate education activist, is writing a book about the teacher shortage and he needs your help if you are or were a teacher.
He wrote:
Attention Teachers. According to the media we are facing a teacher shortage. I disagree. We have a teacher exodus that is the result of 30 + years of “accountability.”
I need your voices.
Can you take a moment and answer these questions and send them to me on email (timslekar@gmail.com). Anonymity is promised. But I want to tell your story.
1) Why did you go into teaching?
2) What has changed during your time as a teacher?
3) Are you being asked to do things that do not benefit kids? Name some.
4) Have you thought about leaving teaching? Have you left teaching? Why?
5) What would it take to remoralize you and stay in the profession and or make you want to get back into it?
Timothy D. Slekar PhD
412-735-9720
timslekar@gmail.com
http://bustedpencils.com/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/busted-pencils/id1060237752?mt=2
412-735-9720
timslekar@gmail.com
http://bustedpencils.com/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/busted-pencils/id1060237752?mt=2
We are far from perfect
But perfect as we are.
We are bruised, we are broken
But we are god damn works of art!
Rise Against
Diane Ravitch's blog 
done
An open story.
1) Why did you go into teaching?
Love to simplify and explain. Put things in simplest terms or metaphors. Make matters apparent and relevant. Touch of organizational mania. You’d never know it from my desk.
2) What has changed during your time as a teacher? Crazy levels of micromanagement, testing pressure and cascading directives.
3) Are you being asked to do things that do not benefit kids? Name some. Cascading directives that either fundamentally don’t work or that kids are not ready for.
4) Have you thought about leaving teaching? Have you left teaching? Why? Yes. Read above.
5) What would it take to remoralize you and stay in the profession and or make you want to get back into it? Sensible direction rather than non-negotiable and often unworkable or inappropriate directives, less focus on testing, simple due respect if not appreciation, meaning a complete end to all of this gotcha nonsense and endless CYA.
Sorry, that wasn’t meant to be a reply.
Didn’t mean to reply to your comment, Bob.
I’m apparently not the repleir in chief!
Autocorrect wouldn’t even allow it!
Repleir in Cheif!
Replyer–? No–red underline.
Reply-er . No–same. Re-plyer. Hey, that works!!
The “X”odus Files
It’s time for the teacher shortage myth to be exposed.
https://bustedpencils.com/2019/04/the-xodus-files/
Thank you for doing this, Mr. Slekar!
I am an 8th grade English teacher in Los Angeles.
1) I went into teaching because it was my destiny. As a young person, I was a good student and always helped my classmates, tutoring them after school, also was a babysitter and summer camp counselor, so I suppose I was always a teacher. It’s what I always did, what I was meant to do.
2) I started teaching in the 1990’s, and what changed was high stakes testing with negative media attention to the scores, and therefore negative public perception of teachers. Principals have become increasingly insistent that unless every student is “proficient”, we English teachers need to be retrained on the basics, and without any effective new strategies to retrain us. That’s degrading. And I used to proudly introduce myself as a teacher to anyone I met, relishing the heaps of praise and pats on the back. Nowadays, I tell people I’d rather not say what I do for a living because the mild praise is so often accompanied by a sideways glance.
3) I am being asked to waste students’ time with state tests, district tests, and test prep. With the test prep, I am asked to have students log into corporation-owned websites with personally identifiable information, and occasionally required to have them provide survey data to those companies. I am asked to have students read snippets of text without context over and over, and answer multiple choice and short answer questions about technicalities of writing instead of delving deeply into meaningful literature and writing meaningful essays.
4) I have to admit, I am counting the days until I retire. It’s the testing.
5) I believe that if high stakes, annual standardized tests were eliminated, I would not look forward to retirement but would instead look forward to every next day.
Done.
Done, also.
I might send you a copy of my answers, too, Diane. Some of the stuff I wrote made me laugh.
One of the great things about teaching is being around young people who can still see so much humor in life and have such tremendous energy and hope for the future.
Thanks for putting us in touch with Tim.
Done, also.
There has definitely been a decline in the number of education students, but now it is being exceeded by the “baby bust” that started with the 2007 recession. My middle school has just seen a 14% decrease in future enrollment…. this is only going to get worse if statistics are correct.
I have much more more, but for now, here is what I put up at your blog!
Tim , I have posted many of your pieces from your blog at OEN
Here are two: https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Tim-Slekar-Scott-Walker-C-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Public-Education_Scott-Walker_Teaching-170912-910.html
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Wisconsin–They-Did-It–in-General_News-Integrity_Public-Education_Public-Education_Teaching-170509-499.html
Tim, you neede to begin with this… because this story is the actualityHe needs to begin with Montana teacher Lorna Stremcha’s. Here is her Lawless Video,
where she tells the horrendous story, of how her PRINCIPAL ( with no accountability) set her up to be raped! .
. I suffered endless harassment and they emptied my celebrated practice, trashed my room and gave my library, which I both for the kids, to other teachers, too. My administration also emptied my employment folder, and filled a 4 decade exceptional career with lies… but what happened to LORNA is THE story. I was famous in NYC, as Pew filmed my practice f or the New Standards research… so they couldn’t do what they did to her. Ther but for the grace of God…
TIM, when you listen to this, understand that this happened decades ago… and nothing changed, so now the real teachers, are gone, and Lorna and I still have nightmares.
Her book tells the story. “Bravery, Bullies, & Blowhards | Lorna Stremcha | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/background-information-bravery-bullies-blowhards-lorna-stremcha/
And BTW, as she says, at the end, she said she still has her license…. but in LAUSD they eradicate you…as they did with the brilliant Lenny Isenberg, who is still fighting decades later, too keep his credentials Lenny, like Snowden, put his foot in it, when he blew the whistle on the social promotion http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/between-dishonest-social-promotion-of.html
It is ALL about money, and the metaphor for the process around the nation
LAUSD’S TREACHEROUS ROAD FROM REED TO VERGARA- IT’S NEVER BEEN ABOUT STUDENTS, JUST MONEY – Perdaily.com http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html
…from Diane’s blog. my comment…………………………………………………………………………….
As you know, Diane ,since my own experience in 1998. http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
with the ploy in the plot to end public schools –the removal of the voices of the genuine professional teacher -practitioners teachers, WHO KNOW WHAT LEARNING LOOKS LIKE — allows the oligarchs to dumb the people down.
It is Shared knowledge that MAKES DEMOCRACY POSSIBLE.An ignorant citizenry is the goal, not just the profit made by the businesses that take over our schools. https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/hirsch.pdf
I have been documenting the WAR on teachers, even as your site reveals the results of removing over 200,000 teachers; this, even as the disinformation campaign began as the EIC — the EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/eic-oct_11.pdf
which OWNS ALLTHE MEDIA, told the people of this nation to get rid of those lazy, tenured teachers. now, we have the TFA trained to ‘teach’ with little knowledge of how the brain acquires SILLS…like critical analysis.
They changed the national conversation from one about LEARNING, to one about evaluating the teachers, so that Pearson could do the Bush agenda and ‘test’ the kids, to discover those bad teachers, and fire them. The teachers are gone because the people hav been bamboozled; http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
fed Magic Elixirs– no evidence required ; https://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
Tim can begin with one of my series: The War On Teachers (mostly posts from your blog and other activist sites, that have to do with the removal of the professionals, so the schools would fail: https://www.opednews.com/Series/War-on-teachers-and-the-pr-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-150217-827.html
At OEN, I have many series which follow the devastation of our public schools, as the INSTITUTION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION is decimated by the ‘reformers’ who sell privatization (I.e charter schools and vouchers)a s ‘choice.’
This is one that looks at the devastation no one sees, because there are 15,880 systems (not districts) in 50 states: Series Page for 15,880 Districts in 50 States: already divided for conquering. | OpEdNews https://www.opednews.com/Series/15-880-Districts-in-50-Sta-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-140921-34.html?f=15-880-Districts-in-50-Sta-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-140921-34.html
This week, as you know, I have been working to document my practice, the enormous success my students demonstrated at learning to write, that brought Harvard and Pew, and led to my NYS English Council award as EDUCATOR OF EXCELLENCE.
MONTHS LATER, I was in a rubber room, fighting false allegations of cursing (and thus, guilty of corporal punishment… and someone said I threatened to kill the principals.
They could not remove me for incompetence, so the District Superintendent did her ‘thing’
What Tim and NO ONE anywhere hears, is the utter devastation that swept over the lives of dedicated, talented professionals who devoted their lives to children.
The filmmaker who spent days looking at the work o fly students, and the letters from them and their parents, also looked at the disgraceful lies used to end my career… and he saw as I could barely speak, the anguish as I looked back at what I had accomplished with my students, and the disgraceful assault that took me out and took me down.
Done. Anxious to hear the results although I think many of us wrote them. 🙂
Done, will be looking forward to a summary of the results.