Reblogged from A View from The Edge, News and Notes from Oklahoma Educator Rob Miller
Last week, I posted an analogy that asked readers to imagine what it would be like to be a high school football coach, IF their job evaluation was set up the same way as a teacher’s.
Apparently, it struck a chord as it has quickly become my most read blog post ever that didn’t include a reference to our former state superintendent, whose name shall not be mentioned again on the pages of this blog.
However, not all the comments were favorable. Take a look at this sweet sentiment from some person named JBoston:
“Typical. Exactly what I have come to expect from a bunch of lazy govt employees who are threatened that their free ride is about to end. Teaching is, quite literally, the only career without any measurable manner in which to determine if a teacher is good or lousy. Now that’s coming to an end and all the lousy one’s are fuming mad.“
We are fuming mad!
We are fuming mad that state and national education policy for the past twenty years has been led by a top-down hierarchy that is completely detached from the classrooms for which it is supposed to be responsible.
We are fuming mad that government bureaucrats have turned the education of our children into a contest with winners and losers. We are not in a damn race! To the contrary, we are educating unique human beings.
We are fuming mad at being treated like untrustworthy slackers through overbearing policies and restrictive mandates which reduce autonomy and are based on assuming the worst from teachers. Teachers are some of the hardest working, committed, and caring people I know.
We are fuming mad for being continually accused of not caring about our jobs and “losing generations of children.”
We are fuming mad to watch our families struggle financially as we pursue our passion to be educators and positively influence the lives of children. Many teachers have graduate degrees yet are paid less than a car salesman with a two-year associate’s degree.