What teachers really want to tell parents
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/06/living/teachers-want-to-tell-parents/index.html?iref=NS1Read it.
If you have children, learn from it.
::Steps on soapbox::
Education is bleeding out all of the excellent educators because of issues this article talks about (PARENTS WHO ARE AFRAID OF THEIR CHILDREN). In order to stop this tragic defeat of the dignity of the teaching profession, we have to empower parents to stand up to their children. When a parent makes excuses, refuses to allow their child to experience the feeling of WRONG, or demonizes the teacher in front of their child they are RUINING their child for life.
I'm not dismissing need for a parent to advocate for their child. Special education students are marginalized even within system made with the intention of ensuring their success (can we say No Child Left Behind and their one size fits all testing?). Students who are treated this way need advocacy but they do not need sheltering.
What's up is down and what's left is right in education today. Be a rebel and be the parent that doesn't swoop in to save the day.
::Then turns to teachers:
Now this doesn't mean that teachers don't have anything to do with this situation. In order for the teaching profession to remain respectable teachers must hold themselves to a higher standard.
I'm sorry, worksheets do not a good teacher make.
We are in the era of technology. We are challenging children who will enter a workplace that will most likely be radically different from our own. I mean seriously, we might lose the Post Office next week! We are training them for jobs that don't exist yet!
Teachers, I know it's difficult, especially when job loss, pay cuts, and a lack of adequate supplies/shelter/etc are breathing down your necks BUT this is the world we live in today. Like everyone else in the country, we've got to pull together and make it work.
What makes a good teacher is someone who realizes the stakes, creates thought-provoking and intellectually challenging experiences that will create lifelong learners, investigators, and philosophers, not mechanized form filler-outers or multiple-choice guessers.
Education is all our problem, collectively and it is not going to get any better until we realize it has to be done together.
::Gets off soapbox::
Cassie,
ReplyDeleteI left teaching because of this. I worked for administrators who accepted and encouraged this type of parent behavior and I was tired from being beaten down. My standards kept falling and falling and falling until I couldn't stand working so hard every day of the year (because let's face it, most teachers work every day of the week and through the summer in some capacity, or at least most good teachers) to be continually told that my standards were too high. I even had students who would get sick of it, including one student who "went off" in my class about how impossible it was to fail at our school because they really made it hard to fail. I was completely disenchanted. Now, I think about going back, but I wonder if I want to deal with the anxiety that goes with teaching. Why not just go into business? Sadly, the cutthroat corporate environment almost seems more welcoming.