I’m one of those stupid people who decided at a very young age to become a teacher.  I knew there wasn’t money in it, but at the time, teachers made enough to get by and I figured that was good enough and that I would be happy.  Teaching was all I ever wanted to do, and I couldn’t wait to have my own classroom.

Teaching was fun.  It was my passion and my life.  I loved the kids, the faculty and even my principal.  I lived in a small town and taught kids of former classmates and later on, kids of former students.  I woke up most days looking forward to my day.  I’ve taught over 20 years and felt like I had a pretty good handle on things, but lately, I’ve come to realize just how miserable teaching has become and how broken-hearted I’ve become over the corruption of my profession.

Due to money and politics, we’ve thrown common sense out the door as well as anything that was important for the well-being of our students.  Now, instead of teaching, we test.  And once we have data, we test again.  Then we test again to see if THAT test correlates with the last test we gave them.  Then we look at data, and look at data, and look at data. We post to the wall of shame so that all the other teachers see how low our kids are and whether or not we’ve “moved them up” or “let them drop.” And then we put the kids in front of these nifty little computer programs we purchased for a cool million or two.  (I wish I could say this is a joke, but it’s not!)

Then we teach in small groups while the rest are working on computers again. Then we retest.  And if the poor kids haven’t figure out how to test better, they end up missing out on their “fun” classes so they can go to intensive classes where they can use DIFFERENT but equally expensive computer programs. Being a kid in school today absolutely sucks!  Being a teacher isn’t much better!  After all, the districts are so busy trying to “teacher-proof” the curriculum, a professional educator no longer gets much choice in how to teach their lessons anymore.  Remember those great lessons you had from the teachers you’ll never forget?  Well, they don’t exist anymore and YOUR child will never have those experiences.

You see, the problem is that we’ve lost our minds.  Education has become a source of big bucks for these testing companies.  They make the tests and give the tests.  The teacher can’t look at them to even know what’s on them or if they are accurate tests.  The company sells the tests to the school districts and then grades the tests and delivers the scores.  The score levels are subject to change based on some super secret formula they use to determine what is passing and what isn’t.  And if kids are failing (many of them do) The company then has a nifty little two-million dollar program available to your students to keep your school from being a failing school.  Being a failing school is bad and only kids who have no transportation to better schools get stuck at the failing schools.  Then the failing schools lose more students and with the loss of students comes the loss of teachers which causes classes to be overcrowded. We all know that BIGGER classes help kids get higher scores on these stupid tests, right?  The poor teachers that remain are threatened that if their school continues to fail, they will be punished even though they are doing the best they can with the students they have.   Does any of this make sense to you? Me neither!

It’s like spreading a disease and then selling the cure!  But nobody seems to care.  We teachers are threatened with “involuntary transfers,” loss of funding, meetings with the administrators, increased class sizes and workloads (I’m doing two jobs right now for one paycheck and nobody bats an eye), and Lord help us when the parents call us up and cuss us out because we had the nerve to hold their child for a few minutes during recess time because said child hadn’t completed their work. And yet, if that child doesn’t do well on the state test, the teacher gets blamed.  When did the teachers become the enemy?

The bottom line is that teaching is no longer teaching.  We are testing facilitators, bullied workers, parent chew toys, and the punching bags of society.  Whenever someone posts a photo of misspelled words, some smart ass always makes a rude comment about teachers or public schools.  Why is it our fault when students refuse to learn?  Frankly I’m sick of giving so much for so little.  I’m a hard worker with a variety of skills and yet I work for pennies and get treated like trash.  What the HELL is wrong with me?

I’ve come to the conclusion that being a teacher is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind of job.  If I do everything I’m told to do by my district and my students fail, it’s MY fault.  If I use every single program and follow every rule and yet the kids fail, it’s still my fault.  When kids don’t come to school, don’t do their work, misbehave and refuse to learn, it’s STILL my fault.  When parents tell me that their child shouldn’t have to read or do work and yet their child won’t do well on the test unless they actually come to school and participate, it’s STILL my fault.

The students’ scores become MY cross to bear.  My sin, my shame.  My scarlet letter, but instead of an A, it’s a big fat F!  There’s nothing quite like being told, “You had the lowest gains in the school!”  No,  the students I had assigned to me had the lowest gains.  I can’t make them want to learn, come to school, or even try.  Maybe the wonderful testing companies could make even more money if they could solve those problems.  Teachers just can’t win.

Testing companies, on the other hand, are sitting pretty.  Your kids are failing our tests?  That’s ok!  We’ve have a solution!  We just need a few million for implementation of “bestsuperdupertesttakers.com” to help your students show gains on the next test!

Oh, it didn’t work?  Well, we’re sure it’s not the program. Obviously you didn’t implement with fidelity.

If only I were a better teacher…