Panel questions on teacher morale and an answer in my in-box

This letter sums up our feelings as educators. Thanks for sharing!

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I’ve barely been in 1/6 of the time the teacher above has and I’m looking for the exit door. It’s all about crunching the numbers and making the scores fit the required quotas. Common Core has been shoved at us with no thought or prep, no materials and no care for student needs. The assessments magically assume that high schoolers, having spent their entire educational existence taking Multiple Choice NCLB tests will with a wave of a wand, be able to compare and explicate texts and concepts in writing. On an accelerated grade level. As graded by a computer. NOW. The sensible thing would have been to roll these out starting in K and working up to 12. But no, it makes more sense to throw them out with no testing (oh wait..we ARE the guinea pigs!), and no materials (some school districts are very clear about their disinterest in buying any new texts of any kind due to budget cuts). The assessments assume students will learn by reading bits of texts with no context, basically disenfranchising anyone who doesn’t come in with the background knowledge already built in (middle class and up).
This isn’t education….this isn’t even a job which pays enough for an employee with less than a decade’s experience to start a family.
Can’t anyone say enough is enough? Teachers in Georgia have no say in their instruction or pay or contracts. Why should we stay? “For the kids”? Does that put food on your table?

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Ron F and mark,

I hear you guys. I have 20 years in the private sector. I will have 20 years in teaching as of next June. Like you, I’ll be leaving after the 2013-14 school year too. I currently spend most of my planning time in “whipping meetings” instead of grading papers and planning for my next day’s courses. You know, “our students didn’t do well enough on their EOCTs, GHSGT scores so we have to attend this meeting so we can learn to teach better.” We’re this generation’s whipping boys. You can’t blame the voters, right? It can’t be their fault, right? Everybody “deserves” a good education”, right? It MUST be the teacher’s fault you didn’t pass, right? And most of the teachers vote Democratic, too! It MUST be their fault! Even if it’s not, let’s blame them!! Get out the tar and feathers, boys; I think I see one coming!

Our colleges attract the rest of the world’s best students, our best students whip COLD the best of the rest of the world’s students easily, but our teaching is bad – why? Because politicians SAY our teaching is bad. The people of our nation, and specifically the people of our state, hate teachers. Look at the comments on Jay’s and Kyle’s blogs. Well, they’re successful. The teachers who can get out because they teach – and know – a discipline that is in a “hot” field, will. I am.

Let’s see what kind of quality teachers you can get when we leave. Rep Lindsey says we should pay teachers “market wages.”

Well Mr. Lindsey, who pays $100k + for his starting lawyers, let’s see if you can pony up that type of pay for chemistry, physics, biology,math, and computer science teachers. I guess you’ll just deduct that amount of money from the foreign language, social studies, and English teachers, right? Yeah, that’ll work just fine. How about giving your friends another tax cut? That’ll make sure we have enough money to pay the back pay to the teachers, right?

The things keeping me going are the bright smiles from the students every day, the look on their faces when I show them what they know to be true is wrong, and the emails from the ones who go off and have a great life and say that without my teaching they wouldn’t have made it. I’ll have great memories of actual teaching in the classroom. What politicians have made of teaching… not so much.

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I think the only teachers that can truly afford to teach are those with expensive, advanced degrees and 10-15+ years experience. This is my 7th year teaching and I by no means expected to get rich by leaving a corporate accounting career to pursue my lifelong desire to teach children. To not have seen a meaningful cost of living raise in 7 years is extremely disheartening and I pray to even make it to 10 years. I would strongly advise anyone thinking about teaching to think seriously about another profession. Anyone who dare question why teacher morale is low should consider substituting for ONE day. Just ONE.

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It will NEVER get better until a large exodus of teachers occur. In Chicago, the striking teachers should just quit – maybe they will get rehired after that.

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We are all looking for the exit. Last one out – turn out the lights.

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I too had to leave a profession I loved. I could no longer look the administrators in the face as they forced us to adopt latest great teaching method knowing the next year they would refer to it as that horrible thing we used to do that did not work. I honestly don’t know how they do it year after year with a straight face. Do they honestly believe the crap that comes out of their mouth? Do they not see a pattern? I actually still read professional development material FOR FUN even though I no longer teach. Depressing to even type that. I miss creating exciting environments and interesting lessons for students, but I could no longer tolerate the BS. I taught at several “good” schools over the years and administrators were all rotten, clueless, double-speaking politicians to the core. They are ruining our schools. My own fellow educators all felt the same way, but would not stand with me against the insanity. They put up with a lot in order to stay employed and away from vendetta duties and responsibilities, and the powers that be are abusing that in the worst way. Parents are the only group I see being able to effect any change, and they don’t have any idea what is going on and how it is affecting their children.

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thousands of students are majoring in education, thousands of education grads are looking for teaching jobs. there are plenty of applicants to fill the jobs of teachers who leave the system.

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Sorry, most whiny “educators”, and I use that term loosely, get no sympathy from me. Hell, I could have bought a small house with what I spent on private school tuition. Tuition that I was compelled to pay because our local public schools, for lack of a better term, sucked.

For years, “educators” have been inflating grades, graduating illiterates, and ignoring the elephants in the room for fear of losing your politically correct merit badges. The end result was that you lost control – first the kids, now your career.

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To add another comment, I have a degree in Operations and Mathematics from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and also an Ed.S. in Education while working on a national certification. SO please dont tell me I suck. How many teachers do you know??? Who makes you the expert??

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Lee: We didn’t lose control, we never had it in Georgia. We are a right to work state, so our power is limited to make substantive change. We’ve lost it as a society, either by the demise of families, by the shrinking numbers of obviously caring parents like yourself, and by the loss of the value of education in the homes of the children we teach. We lost it by trusting our state legislators over the teachers “in the trenches” and by allowing political bumper stickers to guide our decisions. We lost it by trusting a president who never taught a day in his life create the mess of No Child Left Behind. We’ve all lost, and the sins of inflated grades and graduating kids who aren’t ready for life is the result of the policies and mandates set forth by parents, administrators, and politicians. Trust me, most teachers wouldn’t stay if they didn’t care about the kids, and that’s becoming less and less of a reason to keep doing it. We’re not whining; we’re stating the facts. If you were in the system right now, you’d know that.

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I’ve already made the switch, and it is so much less stressful. It was a change for the better for me, but I miss teaching, and my school has had a rough few years.

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Lee, like so many others, you fail to recognize who runs the show in public schools. Teachers have less power to effect change than the students, their parents, and the power brokers on on local, state, and national levels. Like many a corporate employee, many ‘in the trenches’ try to do what is right while a few, mostly ‘pond scum’ reap the rewards of misallocation of resources and other types of corruption. Voters who want to live in a country peopled by literate citizens capable of independent, critical thought, will have to work harder to effect needed changes. Teachers are one but one group among these voters.

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I am on year six and I still enjoy teaching. I don’t enjoy everything about it but I suppose that’s why it’s called work. I do feel fulfilled in my career choice and I am not destitute by any means. I agree that the circus does get old with the politicians and their switching back and forth. I am still hanging on…

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Lee, I’m sorry that your experience was so terrible. However, to lump all teachers into one category seems very unfair. My guess–and I have no way of knowing–is that most of the teachers who read and respond to this blog are caring, hard-working folks who are seeing the profession and the students they love being destroyed by a cynical, corporate takeover of our schools.
My kids have been in DeKalb schools (and not in wealthy neighborhoods, either), and I’ve witnessed incredibly caring, smart, creative teachers, with only a few folks who were clearly in the wrong profession. Moreover, I’ve witnessed more than a few terrific teachers leave the profession because they refused to or could not in good conscience do what the past decade’s so-called “reforms” required of them. They refused to be part of the harm that NCLB and RttT are doing to kids.
I know that, for a variety of reasons, not every teacher can leave teaching right now, so I want to be clear that I’m not judging one choice or the other. I’m grateful that so many great teachers are still there, fighting for our kids.
I’m just sick that the cartel of corporations, aided and abetted by politicians, has so duped the U.S. citizenry that public education is being completely and totally destroyed. Just wait until real teachers are replaced by automatons who can only read a script from a “best practices” manual and administer bubble tests. I’ve seen some of these scripts, and they are, in short, ludicrous–as ludicrous as a shred of faith that Common Core and its army of standardized tests will tell us anything of value about students and their knowledge, skills, or abilities.That kind of one-size-fits-all approach has nothing to do with leaving no child behind and everything to do with the wholesale heist of our tax dollars. (Do the arithmetic–GA’s RttT grant will be more than swallowed whole by the testing requirements–our state will lose money on that deal.)
And do the research–the standardization of schools with Common Core and bubble tests has NO credible research to support it.
Teachers–hold strong to whatever you need to do. By and large, you are heroes.

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“I know many students over the years who wanted to become teachers, thought it was their life’s calling, come to me later and say they had changed their mind and were no longer pursuing teaching.”
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The teaching profession has been deliberately maligned by those of political power and wealth who have decided to undermine “government” public education, imo, instead of working to improve it from within. They have used inordinate negative propaganda against public education. Malicious intent will produce destructive results.

MLK Jr.: “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Right will out, in time, and that includes the value of the teaching profession being, once again, acknowledged.

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Thank you for your reminder of Dr. King’s faith, Mary Elizabeth!

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“If you want to see really low morale and bottom of the barrel administration, head south to Bibb County…”

So I hear. I work with a lady who bailed out on the “miracle” after many years in the system, and she isn’t looking back with any regret. That mess provides yet more proof of one side of the equation for ruining public education: leaders without a clue. When we began appointing superintendents, we handed the keys to the asylum to the worst of the inmates in my opinion.

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Surely this comes as no surprise. It was clear more than four years ago that the government of the state of Georgia had declared war on education generally, and teachers particularly. I have no regrets about leaving: none at all. I only wish that I had not stayed as long as I did.

Even so, what I am happiest about is that I did not subject my children to school in Georgia. I know there are many good and caring teachers in that benighted, redneck state, but the system is stacked against them. My children are taught by top teachers, who are good (or else they are gone) and who know that the conditions and perks are much better than they would get at home. My oldest just returned from a two-week home stay in Paris, and my least is going to South Africa next month. They are becoming global citizens, and we have taught them by example the idea of getting while the getting is good.

I understand that many teachers in Georgia may not be in a position to leave, and for those people I suggest looking into another field of work. When things improve, if they ever do, you may be in a position to go back to the classroom.

For those whose passion is teaching, think about working abroad, especially for language and science and math people. We actually are quite lucky that people all around the world want our skills and are willing to pay for them.

Had enough yet, Georgia teachers? Give up. Throw in the towel. Flee.

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@ Fled, I that’s exactly what I did.

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I think it is funny that all these bloggers keep saying that we need to hire and retain only the best teachers, then we make teaching a position that has horrible working conditions and mediocre pay (retirement benefits are good) and expect great teachers to flock to our sides for “altruistic” reasons.

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Wow….killed that. Should have said….”most happy doing jobs that require little variation in task”

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@Entitlement: Current teachers post anonymously because of very real retaliation. What’s your excuse? Since your kids are in some vaunted yet anonymous private school, you should have no such fears. BTW— There are great public schools with great teachers in Georgia. I taught at two of them, Chattahoochee and Northview.

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@Mountain Man: Your 7:34 post is absolutely right. Given the changing nature of the profession, where will the excellent teachers of the future come from, especially in science and math?

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@ William Casey – to satisfy your curiousity, my children attend Westminster.

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@ William

its time for us to fold the tents and let entitlement and jarvis have their way.
trying to save education is like Lee just before Appomattox.

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@ William,

in the long term, getting dumped by GPC is gonna prove to be the best thing for me long term. I was -WAS – a committed educator, determined to do my part to help fix the system.

all it got me was a shove out the door at the first convenient opportunity.

when I land on my feet, and I will land on my feet (sorry Jarvis, us ex educators do just fine in the “real world”. perhaps you should review your hiring practices) it will take me a couple years to fill the hole I’m in now, but I will ultimately do better for myself and my family if I had remained in education
trying to hold back the tide.

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@bootney farnsworth, in my humble opinion no public workforce should be allowed to unionize. Collective bargaining has no place in the context of tax dollar allocation.

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I am demoralized….I still enjoy my time with students and I still feel like I am an effective educator with students. What demoralizes me are the hoops that we are being asked to jump through to “prove” we are doing our jobs – come into my classroom – anytime! – and you will see I’m doing my job! The fact that federal dollars that cause the hoop-jumping never actually make it to the classroom – money is used for tests and to hire people to tell us how to 1)administer the test 2)grade the test 3) use the data from the test. Have 10 years to go…..hope I can continue to keep a good attitude around my students and just let the NCLB/RttT/Common Core/assorted other “miracles” that will come down the line within my time (hey – 10 years! Maybe, just maybe Common core is the LAST “solution” I will be subjected to!)

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@Maureen: Wait until Oct. and then contact TRS. Rumor has it a large number of teachers will be retiring mid-year. We have several in my small system. As a general rule, mid-year retirements are a rare event.

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@Entitlement: I DO use my real name so I can call you out on the pseudonym issue. Perhaps I’ll start using “Silver Spoon” and claim that my degree is from Harvard. I’m sure that you get the point. BTW– Westminster is a fine school. My son is a math guy, so Northview was plenty good enough for him (and a lot less expensive.)

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@ entitlement,

of course you read it. so we can add disingenuous to the list.

the reason I use a pseudonym is well known. GPC wanted to hang my scalp on the wall for making public several things they wanted kept quiet. like Digger, who posts here occasionally, I am in the middle of exploring all my options, including possible legal action, with the USG.

if I went public, the full fury of the system would come down against me, and probably blackball me.
I protect my identity to protect myself.

you?

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@ Teacher/mom

retiring by choice, or forced out?

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@Bootney: retiring by choice. The change in the 3% income tax just ain’t worth the aggravation of sticking around.

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@ lillie,

I feel you. I served this state across 4 decades only to be told by people making more than twice what I did I was too expensive to keep around.

riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight

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At least i know I’m not alone in what I’m feeling. We public school teachers did not cause the economy to crash in 2008, but we have been dealing with the garbage left behind by those Wall Street idiots and their political lackeys ever since. I don’t understand the problem. We educate children. It is the most important and most patriotic job anyone can have in our society, but we are demonized for asking for the respect and compensation we are due. People who can’t even rear their own children are constantly trying to tell us how to teach dozens of kids at a time. But don’t ask them to actually pay for our services. Any warm body can fill our positions. That’s just funny to me. We are a highly educated, specialized and elite work force, but the respect afforded to us is more on the level of a grocery clerk than someone with an advanced degree. Like I said, it’s time for us to be given the respect and compensation we deserve or leave the field en mass.

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Well, my morale is in the toilet. It’s been in the toilet since school started, and I can tell you it didn’t start that way. I started this school year on a positive note. They did not need to trash my morale, and yet they went right ahead did it, and they seem hell bent on continuing to flush it down the sewer. Everything from continuing to insist on installing administrators who possess little to no real leadership qualities (what dark cave are they GETTING these people from??) to throwing 20 new things at us all at once and then refusing to even give us hints as to how to correctly implement them much less incorporate them into a teaching day…which now needs to be about 6 hours longer anyway, so I can do all their new initiatives I’ve not been given any training to do.

I’m tired. I’m overworked and undervalued. I’m not going to complain about the pay–I didn’t get into this profession to make a 6 figure salary, and I’m okay with what I do make (but then…I’m not a young teacher who’s been pulling down $35,000 for this level of stress since the economy collapsed).

And I’m also not going to lie–I take my summers off. Maybe a staff development class here and there, but I take a good 6-7 weeks off for myself. And not one of you ridiculous trolls I see pop in here to create havoc and mayhem can say a single thing to make me feel bad about it or raise my dander about my decision to do that. From the second I start the school year, to the second it ends, I bust my butt for those kids (the same children that I know and you know–and I know you know and that’s why you leave your sad, ignorant anti-teacher flames–would eat less experienced people alive and in a fetal position in a classroom corner in a matter of mere minutes).

How many CEO’s would go in over the summer and set up their office in the dark and the heat–no electricity over the summer months allowed due to company budget cuts.I get in at 7:30 am, sometimes sooner, and don’t leave until 5:30, sometimes later. There have been times over the last 7 weeks I’ve worked from 7 am to 7 pm straight, gone home, had scrambled eggs and toast for dinner, and gone to bed. My 3 year old is getting the short end of the stick, and I’m having to make the most of our weekends–I’m resentful and angry about that, but we do need my income and so I do what every working parent does. My best. I take work home on the weekends–usually about 5 or 6 hours’ worth. I’m always looking for new ideas and materials to teach–especially now with Common Core. It’s intense…it may not have to be; I don’t know. I haven’t had any training, so I’ve been having to train myself during my off duty hours. So with the kind of salary I earn + the kind of work I put in? August-May equals, I figure, about a 12 month contract in Corporate America.

My Corporate America exec friends agree with that. Maybe because they put in the same hours for on average $20,000 more a year…or maybe because they’re constantly horrified by the amount of money I regularly spend out of my own pocket on my job (due to GA austerity cuts, I now must buy all my own copy paper, laser printer cartridges–I don’t technically have to do this, but if I do not, I will not have enough supplemental materials with which to teach–and I hate teaching out of teacher manuals and student textbooks, snore. And I’ve always bought my own extra craft and special holiday materials, classroom decor items, supplemental teaching materials, because most teachers love their students and want to make school a fun, comfortable, colorful place to be. And I also buy student supplies because I work in an area mommy and daddy just assume they’re entitled to them…or just because they’re entitled; entitlement is a huge and growing problem, and I see it in *all* socio-economic areas, not just the one Mitt Romney wants to point at).

In other words, what I’m saying is: burn out is always just around the corner for me and always has been. I fight it constantly. Teaching is a rough profession; it is not for the weak or naive. For the last 18 years, I’ve managed to beat the burn out. Summers help. If I had to work summers, I’d be heavily medicated or institutionalized at this point–which, right now, both sound far more enjoyable than dealing the increasing amount of bull manure and bureaucracy that has become American Public Ed. But this year, it’s starting to beat me….I’m starting to look for jobs in the public sector. And I’m fine with working in the summer…I just want my frickin’ life back.

But I’m RESENTFUL about that! I’m so *expletive* resentful, not because of losing summers off–I’d work year round for even less money if I could have autonomy, parental/public support, and could do what I know is in children’s best interest and not this educational malpractice we’ve been forced into over the last 12+ years. I love(d) this job. Children are my passion, and the teaching part of the job brings me intense, explosive joy. But I cannot continue to work under the current conditions. Under the current conditions, I can barely drag myself out of bed each morning, and throw a low barometric pressure day into the mix and I’m just done. And if somebody adds something new to my plate this year or next, I may just walk out on my contract and go work as a meter maid or something the public agrees is just as deplorable as teachers. In fact, if somebody came to me tomorrow and offered me a job making comparable to what I make now, I *know* I’d walk out on my contract, and I wouldn’t look back. I would deeply miss working with children, and I would long for those fun, THIS-is-why-I-do-this moments. But I would know in my heart I did the right thing. American public education, pre-NCLB, had its problems. But it was not the quagmire it is now. I would LOVE to do something different but just as worthwhile. Even writing parking tickets for a company with questionable ethics. THAT’S how bad it is right now.

So throw me a bone, Georgia politicians and public. Let me know you care whether a teacher with 18 years’ experience, who is pretty skilled and qualified at what she does, matters to you. I read comments sections of blogs like this all the time, and the general attitude of some of you in the general sector disgusts, amazes, and disheartens me. Sometimes it gives me hope. But if you’re blaming teachers for what’s going on in public education right now, you’re part of the problem not the solution. I promise, and swear on my only child’s life you are.

If I knew the vast majority of the American public had my back, I might have a little more fight in me. But right now, I’m just tired. I worked an 11 hour day today, and it was a rainy day. We were cramped in my tight little classroom trailer, and I got to deal with one of the most passive aggressive, entitled parent notes ever. And more nonsense information about the 10 new initiatives I’m expected to be awesome at this year.

It’s exhausting. I want out more and more every year. And I really hate that.

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To the teacher who wrote the letter:

I want you to know that I agree with you on almost every point. It is extraordinarily troubling at the morale issues facing our educators in public education today. Teachers in public schools deal with more and more discipline issues in the classroom, greater burdens of paperwork that adds nothing to instruction, continued accountability with less support, and shrinking resources.

I believe, however, that the reasons for these issues lie in poor leadership at the district level – districts don’t enforce and support their educators regarding disciplinary matters. Paperwork is created by the central office staff inventing processes around “accountability,” “data,” and “rigor” and invest in programs – none of which get at the heart of what drives learning: engagement of students, excitement and skill of the teacher in the room, and the overall school and classroom culture. Rather than asking for teachers’ voices in what would help THEM to be be successful, more accountability measures are piled on top. Teachers lack a voice in what happens in their schools, and in large part, in their classrooms. And resources are certainly shrinking overall in our state, and especially in classrooms. If anyone would take the time to research where their districts are SPENDING their money, you will see that these district decisions to invest in travel, lobbying, and salaries at the central office are the culprits driving furlough days, reduced instructional days, and reduced classroom resources.

Charters are generally started BY teachers and community members – their voices are extremely important. Without central administration in most charters, more can be invested in the classrooms. Generally the leadership teams in the school drive processes that happen in the school. You’ll find high morale in most charters and very unique school cultures.

As for performance – in our state, charters are out performing districts schools from where they serve kids in almost every case. For those who haven’t, they have been non-renewed or shuttered. You can go off averages, but when you compare apples to apples – that is, the same community, you will see that our charters here are very successful with the children.

Charters are PUSHING districts to do better – NOT in denigrating the teachers, but in shining a light on the district priorities and issues that negatively impact educators and the impact they can have on children. We are not the enemy. if charters succeed in pushing districts to make positive changes, your experience as an educator will greatly improve. Thank you for your commitment to the children you serve.

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