July 14, 2008 | In the News, Life in General
I got mad after reading about what happened to this teacher. When I would tell people that my major in college was English, they always assumed it was because I wanted to teach.
No. It was because I wanted to be a writer.
But it helped that I had a couple of English teachers to encourage me. After reading this article, I am once again reminded that good teachers are hard to find. And keep. It pissed me off that this teacher–who’d been teaching for a long time–had found a way to reach her students, to give them hope, only to have it ripped away from her because why? It wasn’t in the normal school curriculum? Because administrators want to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to dealing with real life topics? WHAT. EVER.
There’s a reason why that No Child Left Behind law was introduced. And why it’s not working.
No one seems to understand that the norm isn’t working. Teachers have to come up with ways to keep their students–at risk or not–engaged and they have to come up with creative ways to do it. Normal, educational, set standards don’t work. You wanna know why teens ditch school? You wanna know why they drop out or never graduate? You wanna know why it’s so damn hard to find teachers? It’s because of all the restrictions placed on them.
“You have to teach this subject, with only these materials and that’s it”. There’s no room for creativity, no room for growth or change. And the teachers who want to help, who actually believe that their students can go on to do better things, are cut off at the knees because they want to introduce something outside of the accepted curriculum.
I could get on my soapbox and go on forever about this, but I’m not. I see this as a simple case of a teacher trying to step outside the learning box only to have the lid slammed down for her efforts.
And the ones who suffered were her students.
Technorati Tags: No Child Left Behind
Suzy :) says:
Wow! I just.can’t.believe that this stuff is still going on in our Country! I mean, it was on the list of the 20 approved books. They were told, in writing, of her intent, their were permission slips signed by parents and still she gets fired over it! Wow! Sad.
Celise says:
Suzy - I agree. It’s very sad. It’s bad enough when kids are labeled “at risk” and “unteachable” It’s worse when they’re written off by society and the rare moment when someone is willing to give them a hand, it’s taken away. It makes no sense to me.