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The biggest frustration for me is not having a voice in decisions being made about the education taking place in my classroom. I sometimes feel like they treat the educators dealing with the students daily , like children themselves while people making decisions on testing and teacher evaluations often haven’t stepped foot in a classroom other than to be a student themselves. I have 30 years of teaching experience with a masters plus 28 credits but still have to act on decisions made by people who should have to spend at least a week in the classroom themselves .. ok done ranting thank you
Chief
I’ve said this for years! I’m on year 27 and have an MEd. I’ve always worked to stay on top of this profession...learned tech early on, latest trends, what works well for my students, an ever growing toolbox but in the end others make the majority of our decisions for us and judge us on arbitrary fields not actually success rates, etc. I got move out of a tested subject to make room for younger teachers (out right told that by the principal) even though my success rates were in the 90% on the test, not even the lowest of those who continued to teach that subject the next year. 🤦🏼♀️ so frustrating. Luckily, when god closed that window, he opened a door but that fact that decisions are made without feedback or knowledge makes me crazy.
Rising Star
1. Respect from those who are not teachers. Witness the earlier post of the article that said teachers did not spend more time in distance learning than in classroom learning, simply based on the fact that parents were supposed to help during distance learning. Those who don’t teach think engaging 30 kids for 45-85 minutes a day is easy peasy, and hey, we have summers off. That lack of respect has filtered to students, who think it’s okay to make teachers their personal punching bags because they get no or lightly punished. With open enrollment, it’s all about keeping students in the building. If a kid does something wrong, admin is afraid to discipline them for fear of them leaving and there go the dollars out the door. So, the kids have schools by the ... and they know it.
2. Unfunded mandates. So, since we don’t know what’s happening this fall, at our school we all have to plan for three different scenarios: back to school; all distance learning; a hybrid. Of course, this is during our summer “off” time when we are usually planning for next year’s classes, and of course there’s no extra money for it, but we have to do it. So, suck it up, buttercup, and make it yet another donation to your school.
3. The expectations have gotten out of control. Kid failing who just doesn’t care? Yo, teach, what ya doin’ wrong? Monitoring social media for bullying; providing food for families in need; giving clothes, medical care, mental health care, school supplies, etc., to students who would otherwise go without; and on and on. Society’s safety net for its children has become its schools, and we have to ask if that is what we want our schools to be. Because if we want our schools to become our society’s total safety net, then a) fund them at that level, b) hire people for those specific jobs, and c) do not also expect super-high test scores unless a and b are done. Society and parents have abdicated more and more of their jobs to schools, and schools are about ready to break.
4. Inequality. If there’s one thing this pandemic has shown, it’s that “those who have” were far better off than “those who don’t have.” Even if a school was able to get a computer to a kid who didn’t have one before, their internet was spotty or nonexistent, or they were not tech savvy and had to spend a couple weeks just getting up to speed. If they didn’t have a phone or home computer, they missed the class lectures and teacher and class interactions. The inequality was astounding.
And that’s it for now...
Add to this list admin who wants to be everyone's friend, puts all discipline on classroom teachers, and generally worries about appearances more than teachers or doing his job.
1.) Pay inconsistency (Charter Vs Public Vs Private)
2.) Admin expectations they don’t follow (IE don’t do as I do - do as I say ... even when I don’t!! Candy is not to be a classroom reward but certainly can come from being sent to the principal or counselor)
3.) Parents - inner city people who want you to teach them but don’t follow through at home
4.) Lack of resources
5.) Lack of respect - if you are producing good numbers but they don’t “see” the methods then you must NOT be following through!! Really ... data is supposed to tell all!!
Sorry - rant over!!
Chief
Very legit rant. I agree!
I am so appreciative of all of your feedback. I don’t think you are ranting I think you’re expressing legitimate concerns and I think that teachers have been bullied into thinking expressing their voice is a rant. I know that’s the way it goes in a lot of communities.
If nothing else please know that I saw appreciate your opinions and value your feedback. This is one teacher that plans to fight for what is right.
Chief
Pay
Lack of support from admin
Lack of respect from parents/society
Worsening work conditions (larger class sizes as an example)
Lack of unions - when pay is set and outdated, admin gets out of hand, parents take things too far, etc. unions are often the place to go, but many states do not allow them.
Not being part of decision making
Increased scrutiny and accountability
Lack of resources, and expectation to provide them yourself (costing money or lots of time)
Chief
I think it is the fact that people think reducing our pay because of bad times or not giving promised raises is just fine. They cut teachers, giving us more students and more grading. They make days longer and lunch shorter, but don't pay more. The have us do distance learning which takes twice as much work, but RIF some of us. It is so frustrating because if they really found us valuable and important, they wouldn't do that! My sister is a curriculum and technology person at her school. When she started there were three people who did that job, this past year it has just been her doing the job of three with no extra pay, but a lot of extra hours. This week they told her they were cutting her pay by $10,000 and not paying her for the month of July. Yet the superintendent gave himself a raise this year.
Chief
OMG! I hope she’s job hunting. That is awful!
I'm tired of curriculum changing so frequently and not having the necessary training/support with it.
Unclear boundaries or undefined roles
 (like requirements to “volunteer” for school activities, monetary contributions to fund-raising efforts, providing health-related services...)
1. Power grabs from Parents
2. Lack of support
3. Inconsistencies in policy implementation
1. Lack of support
2. Admin (see 1|incompetence)
3. Parents
4. Pay
Chief
Not being able to do the work.
The fact that the people most impacted by policy don’t make the policy.
Being judged by the people who don’t do the work.
1. The fact that our resources for our most vulnerable students are minimal, and constantly being cut.
2. Lack of wholistic social, emotional, mental help for those who need it most (we need social workers, counselors, psychologists, school nurses). educators try to fill that role, despite not having proper training & balancing all other responsibilities, which burns them out and isn’t enough for students.
3. Lack of effective individualized professional development for teachers.
4. The. Huge. Inequity. Gaps. Highlighted during distance learning, these gaps during schooling years are what give the students on one end educational power, and hold back the other end. We need to be pouring resources into our most disadvantaged students, and often it seems like they are met with the biggest class sizes & fewest resources.
Might just be restating the same thing, but we need a major overhaul to care for our most vulnerable, disadvantaged kids. I’ve watched too many of them fall through the cracks.
Chief
I would only add that it’s not a crack they are slipping through. They are taking a header into a full on ravine.
1.Admin
2. Lack of support
3. Parents
4. Pay
Pay
Parents
Lack of support
1. Lack of classroom autonomy
2. Lack of materials for hands on learning
3. Lack of parent support
4. Class sizes too big
School is just a thing our kids do bc that’s what they must do. Few are the students that want to be there, to learn and grow. When a teacher sparks interest in a handful of other students, they jump for joy and feel like they are MVP! Then there are the other students that have no drive to succeed. We all beat out heads on the wall thinking “what am I doing wrong?” Often times it’s not us teachers, but society as a whole that’s working against what we preach; but still, the loss is too difficult for us to handle. Realistically speaking, teachers know they won’t reach 100% of their students. And we accept that. But still - we try....
Sprinkle in a dose of inane staff meetings that berate teachers for not implementing every idea that administration posited. The mandatory Meet the Teacher night where time spent waiting for 20% of parents to show up is a perfect example of schools not changing their practice to keep up with the times. Not having a plan in place to support new teachers (1st year or transfers). Admins sitting by watching parents demand grade inflation from their teachers. Admins writing school rules, but never following through on them (ie dress code, vandalism on school property, cheating). What are the admins so afraid of? If Admin got out of their offices and walked the halls - maybe they could instill a little fear in the students rather than the teachers.
So poor leadership; lack of support; lack of compensation for the actual jobs teachers perform. I mean even a babysitter gets a tip for watching someone’s kid.
Class sizes.
I can deal with everything else. I don’t see myself as a great teacher, but I am proficient if you put me in a class with ~30 kids. Last year, 4 out of my 5 classes were 35+, my last one being 42. At some point, we cease to be teachers, and we become babysitters.
Over the 30 years of teaching, I’d have to say:
1. Admin taking to heart what we as professional teachers (who care- yep there are those who don’t and we all have worked right along side of them) have to say and suggest about everything from the curriculum, to discipline, to school maintenance. I’ve had really bad , as in truly psychotic principles to ones that we could have made an inspirational movie about. No lie, y’all.
2. Lack of parental involvement in a good way. Don’t get many parents on P/T nights except for a ranting parent over their child’s athletic time.😡 I’m a college athlete and my athletes are student-athletes. Student always first! I had a good example set by my college coach. I’m not quiet about how their child and they, themselves should be prioritizing.
3. Cooperating discipline from principals. As before, I’ve had a few who’d knife me in the back. They spoke with a forked tongue! Then there were those who I could run a game plan with for a student. We tagged teamed them and the student would eventual comply to the principles of operation for my classes when they recognized a united front.
3. Cooperation of admin and parents- I’ve had one or the other many times but I’ve only had a few on the same page all at once. More so a couple decades ago than now. Currently, there are so many parents who never knew what it meant to be an adult and take the disciplining of their child to heart and as a way of helping them mature to good citizens of this nation. Today we have kids raising kids. If I had a dime for how many times I coached parents on how to raise their own kids, I wouldn’t need a paycheck! If there was a mass instruction way to train proper parenting , our jobs would not include being - Mom/Dad, counselor, teacher, disciplinarian. We could actually just facilitate the material we are asked to and we could go home at the end of a day knowing parents would be doing the majority of giving their own kids the best environment in order to go to school to learn.
4. Pay. When I first started teaching/coaching in ‘83, I sat down and figured up what I was really making as a coach - basketball-$.50 an hour. track-$.25 an hour. I was working anywhere from 10-12, M-Sa. Never worked those figures again. Too depressing!