"I've had enough" - Veteran Teacher Tells School Board

[Smarmie Doofus]

Cross posted from Latest Breaking News, where it was locked because it's not sufficiently timely. NOT because many of the follow-up comments reflect poorly on the Obama administration's ed policies ( and those of the national Democratic Party) that made this letter necessary. That's NOT why it was locked. Hear me? *NOT*. It was locked because it wasn't timely. So there.

Locked thread:http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014420800

Source: Washington Post

Here is a powerful letter that a veteran teacher wrote and read to the Lafayette Parish School Board, explaining why she is sadly leaving the profession. It sums up many of the complaints teachers have with a school reform agenda that they believe is unfairly targeting them and hurting students too. This was written and tearfully read to the school board by Abby Breaux, who has taught for 25 years in Lafayette Parish in Louisiana. Since she gave the speech, she has been inundated with expressions of support from other teachers.

Here’s her letter:

I feel that we as teachers have really had enough, and that someone needs to finally speak up. My name is Abby Breaux and I have been teaching for 25 years in Lafayette Parish, yet no one in this room knows me because no one here has ever come to the schools in which I’ve taught and just asked me, “What do you as a teacher think?”



I keep hearing statements that only ineffective teachers are leaving the system. This upsets me. Many, and I mean many, teachers like me who have been evaluated as effective and highly effective for many years by their administration are leaving the public schools. These are teachers that have been elected Teacher of the Year, LEF winners, and many have received other awards. Even more than that, we have played a part in hundreds of thousands of students becoming great citizens and grownups! Teachers have also been criticized for leaving during the year, for interrupting the students learning. But, these teachers have had enough, and many are actually getting physically sick and can’t make it to the end.

...

Personally, I was hoping to teach for at least 30 years, but because of all these new evaluation policies, fear of retirement issues, and feeling constantly threatened that if I don’t do “this or that” I will lose my job, I and many others have had enough and feel the need to leave. I LOVE TEACHING and never thought this day would come. I love working with kids. You have basically pushed me and many excellent, effective teachers out of the education field or into the private sector with all of your useless paperwork and lack of follow through. I know I may get some “recoil” for what I am saying today, but what I am saying is the truth, and it is something that most teachers say and think every day. Many are afraid to speak up and this is something that I too have been holding in for years because of the same reason. Please, sit down with the CLASSROOM teachers and work with them. But above all, GO TO A CLASSROOM! Don’t choose a “favored, high scoring” school. Go to a struggling school and observe a classroom. Better yet, since you are supposed to be people of “service”, substitute in a classroom. Your eyes will be opened to how difficult it is to do this job on a daily basis.






Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/03/10/i-have-had-enough-veteran-teacher-tells-school-board/

[Egalitarian Thug]

1. Just another fucking Communist working to hinder the enormous profits that will be taken

from this lucrative market once we've all come to our senses and realize that the adults are in charge.





We are so screwed.

[iemitsu]

2. Everything in this letter is true, to one extent or another,

in every district around the country.
I have taught about the same number of years as the woman who wrote this letter and can verify that until NCLB under Bush the job was fun and gratifying. I, like every sane American, expected that POS legislation to be dumped the second that a Democratic administration took office. Instead, Obama embraced NCLB and upped the ante with Race to the Top.
States are passing laws requiring teacher evaluations to be tied to standardized tests even when the teacher isn't teaching in a subject being tested.
Education is being Enronized (cull 15% of the workforce from the herd every year), we are all kept on the edge, all the time, with the knowledge that all the work and effort we have put into our careers can be gone in a flash, because the students assigned to us do not meet arbitrary standards, set by corporate think tanks.
It is demoralizing and depressing and, it seems, that no matter how much evidence is complied, indicating that these reforms are wrongheaded, the movement to privatize public education marches on.
I was hoping the country would come to its senses before the damage is irreversible but it doesn't look like we will be that lucky.

[HiPointDem]

6. enronized. yes. and it's so telling that despite the lack of evidence for these 'reforms,' and

despite serious evidence against them, the billionaire boys' club just keeps on coming.

vote their crap down and they put it up again.

they've set up their own alternative education bureaucracy all over the country under the radar, and infiltrated the public bureaucracy, as well as setting up an interconnected network of astroturf civic and 'philanthropic' organizations. they have their tentacles into everything.

now they're putting big money into podunk little school board elections in cities as small as 30K population.

It's a fucking fascist coup, in my opinion. and they are fascists.

[iemitsu]

14. In my state the voters rejected Charter Schools 3 times

and (as you say) the measure was put up for a vote last election, again, and it passed. Not by much, but after a dozen years they finally pushed it through.
An astroturf group magically appeared in our community the last time we had to negotiate a contract and, under the guise of a community of concerned citizens, insisted that the district tie test scores to our evaluations. A likely issue for concerned citizens, huh?
Their tentacles are into everything.
Your opinion, about the fascist nature of corporate America, is supported by overwhelming evidence, evidence that is never presented to the public in any coherent fashion. Yet, those pushing privatization claim that the current education reforms are based on research.
Perhaps, if the research was designed to discover how to go about destroying public institutions and unionized workforces.

[HiPointDem]

3. kr for truth

i don't get why it was deleted. it was published in the wapo march 10 & posted in lbn on march 10 as well.

[Smarmie Doofus]

4. Do not get me started. (Actually locked, not deleted. But do not get me started.) n/t

[HiPointDem]

7. say no more. speaks for itself, i guess.

[REP]

9. Originally published March 7; republished 3/10 elsewhere

Original publish at http://www.katc.com/news/lafayette-parish-teacher-frustrated-with-lack-of-discipline-in-the-classroom/#_

[REP]

5. Originally published March 7 ; picked up by WaPo on March 10

http://www.katc.com/news/lafayette-parish-teacher-frustrated-with-lack-of-discipline-in-the-classroom/#_

[HiPointDem]

8. wapo = national paper. katc news = local tv channel

if the rule is first publication in any media anywhere there's probably other stuff in lbn that should be deleted.

[REP]

10. That's just a blog on WaPo

But here it is, in GD.

If you spot dupes/beyond 12 hours, please send alerts.

[HiPointDem]

11. Valerie Strauss works for WAPO. She's their Education person. You can call it a blog, but she's

the education beat at WAPO, one of the two national 'papers of record'.

Valerie Strauss is an education writer who blogs as The Answer Sheet. She came to The Washington Post in 1988 as the assistant foreign editor for Asia just before the Soviet Empire fell and Tiananmen Square exploded (which seems like ancient history to her two teenage daughters). After six years she moved to Metro and covered various education beats (D.C. schools and too many superintendents to count on one hand; higher education, etc.), started the Schools & Learning Page with Jay Mathews, and then agreed to try blogging (despite, at the time, hating the word “blog”). She would have liked to be an astronaut if math had not been such a crucible.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/valerie-strauss/2011/03/07/ABZrToO_page.html


DU can, of course, enforce its rules as it pleases & not questioning their right to do so. But just sayin'.

[Godot51]

12. Education for profit

We live in the age of capitalism so it shouldn't surprise us that all things are for sale from life to virginity and all things are for profit. Surprise us, no. Dismay us... well.

Don't get me started but it all comes down to one fact: students (and therefore by extrapolation, teachers) are not products.

So teachers, like all craftsmen, are not absolute, computerized, instant recall geniuses. We are flawed, our students are flawed and therein lies their beauty and our true worth: despite the flaws, one by one, our teachers crafted us and we craft the future generations; hand wrought.

Teachers use all machines and tools willingly, happily even, but the machines and tools cannot replace the hands, eyes, ears and minds of the teachers.

[iemitsu]

16. I was thinking the same thing but could not have stated it

more beautifully.
I would have also mentioned that students, individuals, people are never done developing their minds and skills and that we each develop at our own pace. Our job is to meet our students, where-ever they are on the developmental spectrum, and then to help move them toward mastery of more difficult concepts and skills. They don't arrive looking the same as each other and they don't leave looking like that either. And we shouldn't want that to be the case.
Schools serve diverse populations and teaching staffs must to be diverse themselves to address the needs of their clients.
The corporate efforts to standardize both staff and students are at odds with every school mission statement and the individual goals of trained educators.

[snot]

13. Forgive me, but

I've been warning my teacher friends that this was coming for years, and couldn't get a reaction out of them. I couldn't understand why they didn't seem more concerned.

[iemitsu]

17. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that teachers

are too busy, during the school year, to worry about anything other than tomorrow's lesson plans and that any sane person (which I hope includes most educators) would not expect their communities to embrace such idiotic measures.
Yet, here we are. Your predictions were right.
What do you suppose could have been done to thwart the goals of corporate America, even if we all accepted your warnings?

[snot]

19. Nothing is inevitable, except defeat for those who don't put up a fight.

I certainly sympathize with overworked teachers; and there's nothing to be gained by laying blame.

But I've felt mystified as well as frustrated. Teachers have the understanding, skills, and a personal stake in making the argument against wrong-headed "reforms"; no one else on our side of the argument is as well-equipped and motivated. If they don't take up the fight, who will?

[iemitsu]

20. You are right that teachers need to stand up and fight for themselves,

as do all workers. But we also have to stand up for others when they are being treated unjustly.
Teachers in my district went on strike last school year (over proposed changes in the hire/fire process) and while we were out the state legislature passed a law requiring teacher evaluations to be tied to the test scores of their students.
The state did an end run around us.
By the 15th of this month each of us has to turn in documentation demonstrating that we are worthy of continuing to teach in our buildings.
I have taught in the same building for 22 years, I know how everything works (or doesn't) and where everything is and I should have to demonstrate, in writing, that I provide value to the building's staffing, programs, and extracurricular activities?
There is no seniority any longer. I stood up to Bill Gates when he tried to take over our school, but I was secure in my job. Today no one is.
We have been Enronized. We all feel as if we could be the next target. The work requirements have become unreal, so that no one can actually accomplish everything they are supposed to do. We are exhausted and demoralized.
And, I hate to say it but it looks like we have been defeated.

[snot]

21. I cry for you, and all of us.

And WE'VE GOT TO START GETTING AHEAD OF THE CURVE.

And even if it's too late, we've got to do all we can.

I've been saying for years on DU, it's only logical to expect t.p.t.b. to target the monetary system, media, elections, and education. But posts on those subjects never got much traction.

What t.p.t.b. didn't anticipate was the internet. Now, they've almost got control of that, too.

[iemitsu]

22. Thanks for the tears, I shed more than few over this too.

I agree with you that no matter where we are on the "attack teachers and other public employees time line" we have to stand up and fight back.
I believe too, that the public is on our side and, for the most part, they are just beginning to see and understand the extent to which public employees have been unfairly vilified by those who wish to destroy the middle classes. The accusations that we are lazy leeches and a drain on our communities doesn't ring true to those whose children attend our schools or others who need public services, they know we are not just standing around waiting for unearned and overly generous pay-checks. But they have also been under attack and worried about their own survival, making it harder for them, to pay attention to the details of how other workers are treated.
I hope that we all, soon recognize the destructive dynamics of 21st century America and that we rise together and take our country back.
Thanks for the support.

[LWolf]

15. If I had something to fall back on,

I'd be right there with her.

[iemitsu]

18. Every teacher I know feels the same.

Its not like we have given up on the kids or changed our minds about the importance of education but it is demoralizing to be told everyday that your efforts are not enough.
Teachers, by their nature, are always disappointed that their efforts fall short, they needed the positive comments from parents and the community to balance their own self-criticism.