I want to share something I came across in my web travels. It's a blog written by a neophyte public school teacher tracing the first three years of her career. It's called "First Year Teacher," and I came to it at the end and started reading backwards. The post I read first was the teacher's resignation letter and if you read nothing else in the blog, it alone will tell you a lot about why our public schools are failing.
Oh, I know there are a lot of reasons, from incompetent teachers and administrators, to clueless elected school boards, to intractable students, to uninvolved parents. Like most complex problems, there are no simple and direct answers. But I think that one of the biggest problems is that we don't do enough to support and promote the best and the brightest, because they're the ones who can have the greatest impact on the less fortunate. Read it and weep.
Oh, I know there are a lot of reasons, from incompetent teachers and administrators, to clueless elected school boards, to intractable students, to uninvolved parents. Like most complex problems, there are no simple and direct answers. But I think that one of the biggest problems is that we don't do enough to support and promote the best and the brightest, because they're the ones who can have the greatest impact on the less fortunate. Read it and weep.
I enjoyed the administrators' full support of my discipline efforts, which I tried to limit in order to pick suitable battles.