Teachers Can Take Only So Much
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31 responses to “Teachers Can Take Only So Much”
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Mr. Dick you tell your school teacher friend that she is going to land on her feet. 15 years in classroom means you are vigilant, resourceful, and a self starter. I knew so many teachers who were practically institutionalized. Only job they had ever had since college. They needed those four walls of the classroom. They never understood the prison they had made for themselves.
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Let those parents try just one day in the classroom and see how they feel. I don’t imagine that the “teacher snitch line” is helping much either. Administrators have never had the teachers backs when it comes to parents being unreasonable as the front office is terrified of the parents complaining to central administration.
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Mr Whitehead was a teacher for 27 years. He voted down your comment. But don’t let reality creep into your narrative. Keep on screeching!
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I was a public high school teacher for 20 years and saw the reality every day. I do value all opinions that come with some actual experience. Mr. Whitehead and I taught in different areas of the Commonwealth and expect that our experiences were not always the same.
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“I do value all opinions that come with some actual experience. Mr. Whitehead and I taught in different areas of the Commonwealth and expect that our experiences were not always the same.”
No, no you don’t. You only value the opinions of those whom agree with you. That’s evidently clear based upon the comments you make here.
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Clearly, I do value some opinions more than others as I would expect is the case with most people. That is not to say that I don’t value free speech and that I don’t acknowledge that others will have differing opinions. I will engage with good nature jesting on occasion, but really do try to keep it civil. I find that I do learn a lot from constructive dialogue and it does help to better understand the positions of others.
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Others being able to state their opinions has exactly zero to do with “free speech” and the 1st Amendment. The only arena where that matters involves the Government.
“I will engage with good nature jesting on occasion, but really do try to keep it civil. I find that I do learn a lot from constructive dialogue and it does help to better understand the positions of others.”
Again, given the litany of your comments on here that’s a glass statement.
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I do seem to recall reading about some public meetings where folks were not allowed to express their opinions. It appears to be a glass half full or half empty type of thing.
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Free speech and associated terms only apply to the Government. Typical a “public hearing” is a function of Government.
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20 years in the black board jungle. I salute you! Most school teachers last less than five years.
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Thank you. We do not always agree but I respect your civility herein. I am glad to share experiences with you and will give you up and down votes as the circumstances in MHO indicate. I expect you to do likewise and would have it no other way.
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We actually agree on a great deal. We have different paths to achieving the same goals. These two often had a battle on how to achieve equality but they were in agreement on the necessity for equality. History proves that both were partially correct and have some feathers in their cap to prove it.
https://casaruraldavina.com/img/booker-t-washington-and-web-dubois-differences-6.jpg
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Was Glenn Youngkin the Governor at any point during your tenure?
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No but not sure that it would have made any difference.
Ouch, so if only taught for 20 years – he’s a “screecher” ? OW!
And VaNavVet tells the truth about administrator having your back. NOT!
The problem is inherent in public schools in a highly polarized political environment. Everything is political now. If teachers veer to the left, they piss off the right. If they veer to the right, they piss off the left. Because removing their kids from public schools (or moving to a different district) is not an option for most parents, they have no choice but to stay and fight. The ideal solution is one in which parents had the latitude to pick schools that met their preferences for academic challenge and the values taught. Many teachers are caught in the middle.
Public education can work in communities where most everyone shares the same values. It is problematic in communities where parents have diverse values and intolerant attitudes toward people who think differently.
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Yes and many in the political class are encouraging those intolerant attitudes in lieu of seeking common ground between diverse values.
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Unfortunately, when the dividing line is a river, one can drown in the middle.
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The political class as amplified by social media and its wretched algorithms.
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If teachers leave and can’t be replaced, we have a problem Houston.
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If the school divisions would only tell the truth about their vacancies, we would have a point from which the Governor and General Assembly could act with targeted teacher pay increases. Yet as I pointed out in previous columns, many don’t. They are cutting their own throats.
Even when and if we get true numbers, conservatives and the left will disagree utterly as to the causes of the shortfalls.
This isn’t a problem for the public schools, it is an existential crisis.
I predict widespread virtual public K-12 education within a decade or less driven entirely by teacher shortages.
Teachers, administrators and school boards have been relentlessly attacked over in-person/remote, masking, academic performance, teaching history, CRT, DEI and now ‘grooming” by conservatives and on these pages more than a few times in the last year. It’s a frequent topic on BR with both regular and guest blog authors.
Public school teaching was never an easy occupation. Many start and only a few stay and now they are going. The parents were and are pains in the A$$ long before we got to the partisan stuff… now it’s almost untenable for many. Easy to leave… lots of employers looking for college-educated help these days.
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“Easy to leave… lots of employers looking for college-educated help these days.”
And lots of teachers in NoVa looking. I’m working for a small technology company in Ashburn, Va. We have software that monitors who is visiting our website (as a marketing tool). I look at all the visits. Lots of visits from Fairfax and Loudoun County public schools. The monitoring software also tells what pages on the website are being viewed. The school employees? Careers.
My entire life there have been disputes over books some parent found objectionable, left or right. It happened long before that. I suspect this is just one more unfortunately phenomena made far, far worse by the social media echo chamber. But no question the parents can be hard to deal with.
For 39 years I watched in amazement as my wife put up with stuff that would have driven me to extreme responses. She loved the kids. Part of the problem with staffing shortages is people like my wife were barred from coming in as volunteers during the pandemic, something she had been doing until March 2020. Perhaps that will now relax.
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Appears that Team Youngkin is on board with the efforts to drive the teachers out of the profession. When will they wake up and see the mess that they are helping to create?
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(Team Youngkin) will “wake up and see the mess that they are helping to create”. Seriously?
Team Youngkin has been in office 3 months. They are still getting their feet on the ground. Both the exodus from the schools by teachers and the collapsing new teacher pipeline pre-dated this administration.
But then you know that and wrote this nonsense anyway.
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oh you must think the anti-maskers, anti-CRT, and anti-groomers were around before Youngkin and not energized by his win! 😉
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I have posted before that it is the impression of many that the Youngkin admin is anti-teacher as evidenced by the efforts on divisive concepts, the “snitch line”, and the apparent targeting of Northern VA districts and counties. I agree that they are still getting their feet on the ground and came in without much experience. Even JAB has commented about their mis-steps. I did not say that they were the “cause” but was implying that they don’t seem to be doing much to address the situation and may be making it worse by continuing to feed the divide between parents and teachers for what appears to be political purposes. You may still feel that this is nonsense and lets hope that it is indeed misplaced.
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the teachers I know do have volunteers in their classrooms so not sure if rules are different. There
are also paid paras and said to be worth their weight in gold for classroom management.someone said something about cameras to monitor teachers. What those cameras would more likely show is what teachers have to put up with , with some ‘johnnies” whose parents are also hell-on-wheels.
A teacher can have 18 kids and their parents and 17 are normal and decent and a joy to deal with and one and his/her parents are enough to cause the teacher to want to quit. Throw in some anti-maskers and other political stuff and time to find another career.
re: liberals and conservatives will disagree about why teachers are leaving.
yes, but then reality competes with opinions.
we’ve had a couple of years of unrelenting attacks on teachers from conservatives on a variety of issues.
Teachers are not leaving because of liberals attacking them…just saying.
As part of a reentry to society program, we should take soon to be released (and as most libs say unjustly convicted) prisoners and train them to serve as teachers. They can definitely bring a diverse world view to the schools and can easily implement restorative justice principles.
I mean we’ve all been told the vast majority have been wrongly set up by a systemically racist judicial system so we at the very least owe them an opportunity to not only have gainful employment but also nice benefit packages. Plus it will become evident to the children that it is ok to normalize former felons.
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