Posted on 01/12/2023 4:12:57 AM PST by MtnClimber
The schoolhouse of twenty years ago is not today’s schoolhouse.
I have taught high school English in the public schools for twenty years in three states, including two red states and a deep blue state. I have taught mainstream English, honors English, and remedial English. I’ve worked in alternative schools, high-poverty schools, large high schools serving mostly English learners, and predominantly white, middle-class schools.
Last month I let my teaching license expire. For the first time since 1998, I am no longer qualified to be a teacher in my home state of Kansas. When I consider the public education landscape not only in the Midwest, but across the country, it is with sadness that I think, “Not qualified to teach secondary English anymore? You’re right.”
I’m not qualified to deliver counseling services to the legions of broken, fatherless, emotionally stunted students who walk through our classroom doors every day. I’m not qualified to engage in behavior modification with dysregulated, angry kids who exhibit no impulse control, zero empathy for others. Students have talked about killing me, threatened to hit me in the face. Upon writing up these incidents, I have been blamed, told I need to work on “building relationships” with students, or offered more training on working with students dealing with trauma and abuse. Administrators pass off these students’ comments with, “Oh, he didn’t mean it... “ “I talked to him... “ or “Think about what may have occurred in your class that provoked this behavior.” There are minimal consequences for students who verbally and physically assault teachers. It’s open season on public school staff. I am not alone.
I’m not qualified to instruct near-adults in the basics of third-grade reading, grammar, and spelling skills. It's become increasingly impossible to teach high-school level literature, let alone the classics.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
My wife is a grade school teacher and is calling it quits. Even kindergartners are out of control. And the administration provides no support and when she disciplins a student she’s the one who is wrong. I wouldn’t last a week as a teacher but I’d sure put the fear of God in the students.
Genius!
I think you are right that fatherless homes are the biggest part of the problem. Can you say father any more?
Mrs sjmjax is a high school English teacher. She could write an almost identical version of this experience. As well as another family member in public education. It’s worse than most adults or parents can imagine.
This has been going on for a very long time. I volunteered to tutor HS students in low-middle class suburban MD for the SAT test back in the 90s, primarily in Math. It was an impossible task, the students lacked basic Math knowledge and skills to even start SAT prep. We mostly sat around talking about life in general.
You didn’t mention law enforcement, but who in their right mind would choose that line of work in today’s political climate?
Retired at the end of last school year as a High School/Middle School Math teacher. Mostly felt like I was making a difference both scholastically and pastorally. However, I feared this would have been the year I would have to strike a child (due to all the reasons listed above).
I sympathize with her completely. However, the above sentence reveals another problem: the schools have stopped "tracking" students, so that everyone "feels" equal. The intellectually gifted kids are getting ignored, if not abused.
When there was tracking, those who have the aptitude or desire for college literacy would be in a separate class from those who are headed for trades or retail. Not that you don't need reading in the latter two; but you're less likely to need literature such as the examples she cited, i.e. Anna Karenina and equivalent.
Our public schools have become a failure factories churning out students who are barely literate, unable to write a coherent sentence, ignorant of basic science, know nothing of history or geopolitical and are filled with CRT, gender bending ideology and climate change cultism.
The author is a woman.
But that is for those who read before posting.
Nice bit of pointless snark! Congratulations!
My budding sociopath boy almost put my eye out with an automotive tow strap hook. I wanted to press charges but it didn’t happen because he was a “minor in a domestic.”
Actually, Africans who immigrate here legally have a work ethic and value education. I'd gladly trade them for our own domestic hoodrats and babymamas.
“I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years. [Said to two governors regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to then-Air Force One steward Robert MacMillan]” ― Lyndon B. Johnson
A two legged rat.
That’s about what I figure. I’ll see it if I’m an old man.
I’d prefer neither. A couple generations and their kids will be DeQuarious Jenkins instead of Abayomi Musa…
Lyndon knew his politics. The 90%+ voting block that resulted is the proof of that perception. Johnson saw everything through a political lens.
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