Originally published at: No, The Teachers Are Not Okay
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Probably part of the Greedy Oligarchsâ Partyâs plan" to exhaust the teachers until the public school systems, for want of them, falls apart. As they are the party of planters, they always hated free public education anyway.
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Iâm convinced that like the US Post Office, public education is just a little too socialist for a good American capitalist to see as anything other that pure evil. Even Democratic moderates (who are too right wing to even be âTorriesâ in the UK) tend to support charter schools which should indicate just how deep the anti-socialist ideology really runs at this stage.
The hoops we make public school teachers jump through would never be accepted by any other public sector worker either. Can you imagine police, or EMTs having to âproveâ their competency every year or two? How about nurses or doctors? Nope. Keep kicking the teachers - itâs got to be their fault.
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Retired high school teacher here: 35 years. SingerÊ»s piece makes some excellent points, but it lacks analysis. Why does teaching suck as a profession? It was always hard but about 15 years ago administrators began obsessing about accountability - in ways that mandated a âmeasurableâ curriculum. They distorted what I did in my classroom by requiring that I teach and test the students a velveeta curriculum I knew they did not need. It only got worse. My school purchased an educational package used to identify measurable teacher behaviors on a vast, multi-level matrix called The Danielson Framework. People with clipboards were hired to go into classes, observe for 15 minutes and then leave. The school trustees began hinting that teacher scores on the matrix would determine compensation. To sum it up, the profession became corporate.
How did we respond? At my school, we unionized. I was on the organizing committee. Steven Singer, if your school is not unionized, do it. If your district is unionized but the union leadership is in bed with the admin, then take back your union. Make it work for you. Nobody gives you dignity. You take it.
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It sounds like business as usual is out of context. Shouldnât instruction first teach how to adopt and follow safe and effective procedures and pandemic awareness. If that isnât working maybe there are additional safety precautions that should be developed. I donât blame teachers that have simply had enough.
What a perfect time to learn about the function of our government agencies.
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âThen there was a vaccine and many of us wanted to reopen our schools but only if we were prioritized to be vaccinated first. We actually had to fight for the right to be vaccinated.â
That depends on what state you were in. Teachers in Oregon, my state, were offered vaccinations before seniors. Thatʻs right. Last year in January and February, teachers got vaccinated but seniors over 70 like me were given lower priority - even though we were the ones far more likely to die from COVID. I looked at the daily death tolls in April, May and June with the thought that those seniors died because they could not access the vaccine.
When the virus first hit public consciousness sometime in February or early March, the Governor of Texas declared that seniors should be willing to sacrifice themselves to keep the economy going. Oregon governor Kate Brown was not stupid enough to say that but her vaccine priorities said it loud and clear.
Children learn more from what we do than from what we say. As a former teacher, I also had the thought that the message being broadcast to every child in Oregon was that their educational needs take precedence over the lives of seniors.
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Perfect! Just what the wealthy (DeVos, Gates, etc) want; âcharterâ for wealth increase while controlling thought of worker drones with little curiosity bereft of critical thinking skills to be slotted into corporate box.
Going on for decades in the public schools with âstandardized testâ takeover pushed by corporations that endlessly grab profits over people! Never-ending funding cuts, hiring administrators instead of teachers. Low pay.
Remember school nurses instead of cops with guns, when your âsocial studiesâ taught Civics, music departments, art teachers, poetry?
Now right-wing mind-sick fanatics with lists on liberal socialist commie teachers destroying america indoctrinating their precious young Magahats forcing them to think and question and discover that is not acceptable.
Dad & stepmom taught HS in the 60s/70s, I taught Pre-k in the late 80s into the 90s (ECE) but didnât like what I was seeing in the elementary ed sideâŠand men were expected to teach 6th graders not the youngers. I got out.
End teach-to-the-test, bring back critical thinking, cops and corporations out, take a whacking big chunk of Pentagon budget to rebuild public schooling. And of course LISTEN TO THE TEACHERS.
sealintheSelkirks
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I can totally understand the frustration & nightmare this situation represents. I live in Oregon. When the Covid-19 infection rate dropped off significantly, our state governmentâs inclination was to quickly âopen upâ the counties with lower infection rates. Common sense would suggest that as being premature. I went to the grocery store to find no one wearing face masks. That is a nightmare scenario for meâŠsince I am immunocompromised. I wrote to Gov. Brown & Kroger stores saying that this policy change is a mistake. Covid-19 is cyclical & infection rate changes (up or down) can take weeks to show themselves. A few weeks later, a Delta variant surge raised its ugly head & mask mandates were re-started. Then, right in the midst of the Covid-19 surge, they made plans to open up the schools. I wrote Gov. Brown saying that opening the schools right now is a bad idea (we should wait until approved vaccines are available before opening the schoolsâŠjust weeks away). School systems around the country, which opened earlier, are already closing schools after a couple of weeks. Teachers are dying. The science about Covid-19 is clear. Covid-19 behavior is clear. The cyclical nature of the Covid-19 infection process is clear. We need to be more cautious, make plans based on science & do not base our decision-making on political pressure & bias. Schooling should remain online until children & teachers are vaccinated. Require vaccinations to attend.
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Well, except for natural disasters, it doesnât get much more dire than this heartfelt plea for backing, funding, and increased personnel. While unaware of the travails and travesties until now, Iâm taking action (state and national) to support radical improvements very quickly. While weâre very near the end of legislative sessions, maybe something positive can happen now because school is in session now.
Convincing people to turn on the classroom HEPA filters is a hard job. They lower transmission.
No you donât really need to ever change the filter if removing covid viruses is the goal. If you forget to water a flat of seedlings and theyâre all dead now, a gallon of water wonât revive them. In the same way, a million covid viruses locked inside a HEPA filter until they all dried out will still be 100% dead viruses even if you bang the HEPA filter over your head and breathe deeply.
The next step will be airplane-like air nozzles that blow cleaned air onto individual studentsâ faces. A covid-positive student or teacher can cough all day and infection rates will still be low or zero. This solution is affordable would probably crush the whole pandemic forever if implemented, but donât hold your breath.
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Yep, same crap up here in this county in deep red NE Washington above Spokane. Highest infection rate ever in August at nearly 900, another near 600 the first two weeks of September. In 6 weeks? This county only has 40lk population! Be interesting to read the weekly paper to see the last two weeks of SeptâŠ
Three schools have already closed, the ambulance service warned it canât respond to car accidents and other calls because theyâre too busy transporting sick to the big regional hospitals in Spokane.
The Idaho illegal immigrant refugee flooding in because their Kootenai health instituted battlefield triage; only treat those that have a better chance, as their hospitals are inundated. So the Idaho no mask/vaccine are taking up the beds that our WA covidiots need.
Quote: EVERYONE on a ventilator in the Providence hospital system is not vaxxed.
Breakthrough Delta killed a guy Iâve known for years in five days from testing. Him & his crew laid my carpet 10 years ago. RIP Mike V. Iâm staying the hell home and barely leaving the property. The local Safeway will NOT enforce the state mask mandate, or the Post office.
This is insane but the more that die the less one has to argue. Yeah, death rates are going up, too.
sealintheSelkirks
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If we sit back and allow our ecosystem to collapse bring excruciating suffering and complete destruction of our world as weâve known it, why are we educating children to enter this collapsed society? Our nationâs experiment with democracy and empire seems to be collapsing. Time to wake up.
I live in a progressive western Washington county and we are being inundated with Idaho/Montana/Alaska anti vaccine knuckleheads preventing surgeries that require a hospital stay. Our country is in deep deep trouble. The election in 2022 will either bring democracy back or sink us into fascism.
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Actually, Having been a nurse for 35 years, I can attest to the fact that nurses (and yes doctors) do indeed have to prove competency every year. The requirement is for a certain amount of CEUâs (Continuing Education Units) that we have to pay for mostly ourselves. Also, for nurses anyway, there are clinical competencies that must be passed to keep ones job. Youâre right however about charter schools!
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I hear ya a hundred fold!..
This sort of essay, testament, needs to be underlinedâŠ
It is the same hell for teachers here in the UK (Beleive me, I get it the âlowdownâ from teachers who are just about hanging-on-in-there, who are progressive types and who long to give the children a more whole-istic, well-rounded, person-centred education, where maybe their own minds are facilitated into being, along with other important things are teachers are not allowed to do much about!!
We are SO BACKWARD: and like with the climate crisis, it just continues going in the wrong direction! Surely Humans can get together and once this is Seen, decide Enough is Enough!
It is Profoundly Tragic and of course unfair on all the individual teachers, most of whom are far-too-overworked (not underpaid in the UK - but they get enough to keep them there, so I can be cynical!) and overstressed!
It is BEYOND OUTRAGEOUS!
I want to have our own Humanistic primary (i.e. 2-12 years old ish) School for all sorts of reasonsâŠ
I also like to copy-and-paste the Ken Robinson âChanging Educational Paradigmsâ video (10-15 mins) -but I am not allowed to out the URL direct. But is very worth a google!..
I just got to read this article and I have to agree with everything in it. Unfortunately, the stressors were there before COVID ever reared its ugly head! I, for one, had to take medical retirement and am now not able to work at all from the physical and mental wear and tear on my body and mind, not to mention my spirit! PTSD, anxiety disorder, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, degenerative disc disease, no cartilage in my knees, and needing three surgeries (so far) on my hands. While I am not stating that ALL of this was caused by teaching, the stress that came along with teaching and the commercialization of the profession have greatly contributed to most of them. So, I have to applaud the author for coming out and stating so well what many of us have been saying to each other and our friends and families for years because no one that mattered would listen.
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