- Teacher Accountability – You’re kidding me. We’re just now thinking of this? “Wow! I want the job where no one is going to ask whether or not I’m performing well. That means I’ll be able to play solitaire during AND in between classes. Hooray!” Maybe I would have had a better education had we thought of accountability in 1870 or even in 1970. Maybe my history teacher would have talked about the Alamo rather than regaling us with stories of his caving excursions and why Pistol Pete Maravich was the century’s best basketball player.
- Teacher Accountability – Student grades come from so much more than whether or not there is a capable teacher in the classroom. I know of teachers who use every trick in the book to teach their students and still some boys and girls walk out of the room just as glossy-eyed as ever. This can be attributed to playing video games ‘til 3am or too much of dad’s marijuana that morning. Theoretically, a teacher today could get paid less because the class of 1995 decided to get drunk and pregnant on spring break. Our future is bright!
- Ron Ramsey, Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee – I heard Mr. Ramsey discuss his love for teachers on Ralph Bristol’s talk radio show. Ramsey said that his mother was a teacher and he understands them. I’m sure he loves his mother, but this does not mean he knows what it is to be a teacher. I lived with an African American for two years. Does that mean I know what it’s like to be a black man? Ramsey has also supported legislation that would enable people to come out of the regular work force and begin a teaching career. How nice. Our schools are crashing and now we are going to put people in the classroom with zero training. He told Bristol that he could teach Tennessee History. I’m sure he could, but probably not to thirty 8th graders; five of which only eat at school, ten that don’t know who their father is, and the rest are just lucky to be there. He wouldn’t last five minutes.
- Teacher Unions – We are in this mess because teacher unions joined the camp of one political party. They sided with the Democrats and now the Republicans don’t want them. Watching out for my pay? Somewhat. They also fight for political issues that I do not agree with. They protect good teachers but they also allow fowl, deranged human beings to educate our most important asset. It takes too much to get fired from a school system.
- State Testing – We need a system that determines whether or not schools, teachers, and students are performing well. This, I agree with. However, with our concern over the current system of testing, has anyone asked whether or not we are instilling a love for learning in our students? Whether you have asked this or not, the answer is, “NO. We aren’t.” Kids do not see the value in what they are doing. What is a good answer for, “why do I need to know this?” No amount of “you-must-learn-this-or-you-are-going-to-get-a-bad-score” is going to motivate some students to mark anything but C for the more than 7 hours of testing they must endure in a four day period. I am currently reading Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson & Bill McKibben. It is an extraordinary book that is leading me to believe we are headed down the wrong path with making kids learn facts and figures rather than what it is to be a productive human in today’s world. You can do this and still get good math scores.
- Finally, schools can be labeled “failing” regardless of how many advanced students they have on TCAP. That’s messed up.
Who will I trust? People who think I should get less pay and fewer benefits or people I do not agree with philosophically? They both say they have students’ and teachers’ best interests in mind, but I’m divided. Whoever wins, I just hope that the students get a better education and that teachers (and School Counselors) get paid fairly. I didn’t earn 90 graduate hours to eat Ramen Noodles every night.
