Imagine this: Your classroom is well-prepared. Displays are fresh. Desks and tables are exactly where you want them. Your lesson plans are laid out in detail for the next month. It is the first day you will have students in your room and you are ready, or as ready as you can be, because there’s a problem. Besides your fellow teachers and the few people working to prepare food in the cafeteria, the only other nonstudent in the building is the principal. No aides, no counselors, no secretaries. This is the situation teachers currently face for the 2013-14 school year in the city of Philadelphia.
Every year, we hear about teachers, schools, and districts facing layoff or closure or some other kind of cutback. Entire teaching staffs have been removed from troubled schools, only to be rehired. Too many teachers face uncertainty every May, wondering if they will be back in their classrooms when August turns to September.
I’d be interested in hearing your stories about churn, contract renewal, and cost-cutting moves in your school or district that did or didn’t work. As teachers, we always think we have the answers to education budget problems. What are yours?
How do we solve the budget cuts to education? Good question! Let’s first look at what is being taught. Not only are our children learning math, reading, science and all the other basics, but they are also being made to take double classes so that they can learn the government tests. Why can’t we just teach what they need to know to begin with (which is what is on the tests anyway) then we wouldn’t have to spend so much on reeducating our children. If they are learning what they need in the first place then there would be know need to over teach. Which in turn puts then in a tailspin toward burn out and drop out.
Another thing we can do is stop all the over spending on the stupid stuff that is just fluff to make our administration look good and give to the teaching staff what they really need instead of all the lip service. You know what I mean you have to do more with less while the big shot fat cats sit in their plush offices trying to figure out where the latest piece of art the acquired would look best.
If the government truly cared about our future then they would get off their lazy buts and do what is necessary to secure a future for our children that is worth having. I don’t blame one branch or the other. They are BOTH responsible for this fiasco. One tries to play the I am here for you card while stabbing us in the back. The other talks a good story then falls short on their threats to stand up for what is right. So I say to the government as a whole. Get your thumb out of your backside and do what we are paying you to do. And we as a people need to take back what was ours in the first place; THIS COUNTRY!!!!