Schools are the ones driving teachers away
I’m a big believer in our public schools and believe they lay the foundation for the future of our country. As go our schools, in time, the country. While I know that we have any number of pressing issues in America, if we don’t begin to have the difficult conversations about our schools, it’ll only be worse for future generations.
I want to praise the Iowa House for passing a bill to give teachers a pay increase. It’s both well-deserved and long overdue. While teachers are leaving the profession in record numbers, many states are now recognizing that all other issues in education won’t matter if this trend continues.
My concern is for every teacher I’ve ever had the privilege to know. For them, it was never about the money. A pay increase is merely a temporary fix. But the reality is that, as the autonomy of the classroom continues to dissolve, the best and brightest will continue to leave.
Relative simplicity in 2002 quickly evaporated
In 2002, I came into the profession as an eighth grade social studies teacher. Even then, veteran colleagues would share how much worse the job had become since they had begun their careers. I vividly recall my social studies counterpart (about 50 at the time) saying she would never recommend coming into the profession to anyone. Not what you want to hear as a first-year teacher.
The biggest complaint I heard was that they were losing more and more of the autonomy they had once had with each passing year.
At the time, I was given a curriculum for eighth grade social studies. That was it. It’s almost scary to think teachers had even more autonomy before I started. I created my own lessons and my own assessments, and taught at my own pace. So long as I followed and completed the curriculum, it was solely my choice regarding activities, lessons, assignments and pace of my classroom.
Even with such autonomy, I soon found out that the oversight was only just beginning.
Although I was a licensed teacher, I had three years to prove I could teach. According to a statemandated evaluation via a portfolio, I had to provide evidence of 42 criteria based on eight standards. I was assigned a mentor whom I had to meet with once a week, as well as attend district meetings several times a quarter. I realize these were part of both state and federal mandates, but, as a professional, I found the constant supervision from mentors and administrators to be offensive.
After my portfolio was approved, I thought the oversight would subside, but the supervision only increased until I chose to resign years later.
Teaching isn’t a career that believes you’re a professional until you prove you aren’t; you’re constantly having to prove you’re a professional.
Like all teachers, we were expected to attend “all the other” meetings: staff meetings, professional developments, professional learning communities, curriculum meetings, team meetings and many more. And again, over the span of 20 years, the numbers of meetings only increased while the autonomy of the classroom was becoming less and less.
Initiatives, administrators, instructional coaches pile up
With each passing year, new initiatives, policies and mandates would come and go from federal, state and district levels. Some, like No Child Left Behind, would diminish only to be replaced with the Every Student Succeeds Act. And while some were simply replaced with another, every year something new was added to the teachers’ plates. In 20 years, I don’t recall anything ever being taken off of that plate.
In addition, to ensure the districts were in compliance with these mandates and to oversee that teachers were also following these initiatives, there were increases in the numbers of administrators and “instructional coaches.” In time, what was once my class became less uniquely mine and more the same as all others.
By the time I resigned, my own style of grading was replaced with Standards-Referenced Grading. This included new policies (though teachers objected) instructing all teachers to grade based on a 50% bottom. By doing nothing, students earned half credit. No longer was there a purpose to assignments, as I could no longer add them to a student’s grade.
So yes, I could assign work, but students didn’t have to do it.
As a result, more students failed assessments but, as they had unlimited opportunities to pass, I was spending more time grading than teaching. Not only were all tests, lessons and activities the same as all other classes, but the expectation was that all grade levels and subject areas would be paced within a few days of each other.
What was once my class became anything but. It became the same as all others. And while I agree that there is merit and it may have been well intended, I
an alliance. They share munitions, supplies, technology and financial tools, while coordinating military and diplomatic strategies worldwide. With support from Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang, Moscow is not just attacking Ukraine – it’s threatening the entire free world. This is why, despite volumes of misinformation suggesting otherwise, our European allies have given more per capita to Ukraine than the United States has contributed. These allies provide Washington with the economic and military power necessary to match China and Russia.
The Beijing-Moscow-Iran-North Korea axis wants to weaken Europe to divide democracies and take them on as disunited and weak. Despite the many frustrations inherent in a partnership of free peoples, the transatlantic alliance makes the United States stronger, and our adversaries know it.
Ukraine is the strategic hinge of Europe, where the battle for the future of Europe and the Indo-Pacific is unfolding. Declining to fight that battle out of fear of provoking a Russian response runs counter to U.S. security and the alliances that give America the power to protect itself with its allies.
Supplying Ukraine with weapons like the ATACMS doesn’t just help Ukraine. It also puts the United States in a position to deter our adversaries.
China, Russia, Iran and North Korea want nothing more than to build a world order that they will control. Providing Ukraine with the means to pursue victory is a crucial step in ensuring that they fail.