Teacher Appreciation Week
For those that don’t know, this is teacher appreciation week. Don’t worry. I’m not fishing for compliments or gifts or anything like that. I simply bring this up to point out an obvious point that our beloved governor seems to have missed. He set up a task force.
It seems he doesn’t understand why there is a teacher shortage. We’ve talked in these spaces before about how the task force was set up at first. The first iteration had only two teachers with one housed at their district’s administrative office. Talk about missing the pulse of the people. You don’t have to be an educator or an expert in education to see the problem there.
The other problem is manifest in the week they chose to make teacher appreciation week. They’ve done this before and it never donned on anyone to somehow switch this up. In addition to being teacher appreciation week, it is also the week where we give the Biology, Algebra, and U.S. History state exams. It’s also the same week where most of the AP exams are given.
We appreciate you so much. Why don’t you wear jeans this week. We’ll have some nice breakfast burritos for you in the faculty lounge. Oh, also remember that if you do something wrong while proctoring the STAAR test we will be sure to pull your teacher’s license. Don’t forget your parting gift on the right.
Do we really need to ask why people are leaving the profession or refusing to enter it in the first place? I know some of you can’t get past the paywall but the headline here says it all. For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, it says that a federal audit revealed that HISD under spent by 300 million dollars over a five year period.
Some guestimates conclude that HISD could raise their teacher salaries $10,000 a year across the board without batting an eye. These things usually filter their way down to neighboring school districts. No one wants to be left in the dust when the district next door suddenly boosts pay. However, it would be a big mistake if the task force concludes that we just need more money. Make no mistake, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the idea of this particular week being teacher appreciation week is kind of a clue.
I had a lull in the middle of my career where I could have gone in other directions. Some here know that well. Ultimately, teaching was my first and best destiny. It just took awhile to find a place where I was comfortable and belonged. We often drop young teachers in the toughest places to teach with the most difficult situations to overcome. We offer very little support and then wonder why so many leave. It shouldn’t take blue ribbon committees and millions of dollars to figure this out. Just about any teacher can tell you this if you stop long enough to listen.
You got breakfast burritos? Hell, when I taught, they appreciated us so much, we all got a little chicken biscuit and a carnation. But they still expected us to pay for an MS degree, do that while we were working twelve hours a day and paying for 90% of our classroom supplies.
I felt appreciated. Yeah, right. I left teaching over ten years ago. I have never regretted my decision.
1Thanks Nick and all teachers for your amazing, dedicated, tireless and hardworking service to our children and community! You deserve immense praise just for putting up with rebellious kids like me.
But again we are missing the point. Conservatives have been systematically and purposely trying to destroy Public education because it helps children learn and socialize positively. Their ongoing jihad is to privatize education so they can indoctrinate kids into extremist right wing Conservative Christian ideology unhindered. It’s a cult thingy.
2Nick, you clearly are not cut out for a career in administration: “Some guestimates conclude that HISD could raise their teacher salaries $10,000 a year across the board without batting an eye.”
Administration sees it as “$100,000 a year across the board for administrators, with maybe $500 for teachers if their students do well on exams”. And if that ends up looking too greedy, they’ll only give themselves 50k a year but with extra “administrative assistants” hired.
For universities, that is where the real bloat comes from over the past 30 years. It seems equally bad for public schools. My old elementary school in the Fort Worth ISD had a principal, a secretary, and a janitor. That is now up to 10 employees with about the same number of students. And away from the actual schools with their pesky students and teaching and stuff, the growth is even worse – especially for salaries.
3Better to keep the masses uneducated, it appears. Or offer educational opportunities only to those with cash:
“Abbott said Wednesday that Texas would consider challenging a 1982 Supreme Court decision requiring states to offer free public education to all children, including those of undocumented immigrants.”
https://t.co/mkp3oMbw4g
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