Will You Stay Cold or Light a Fire?

Teachers are awesome. They are this group of people who put others before themselves. Many times before their families and social lives. They care more than you can imagine. Teachers take a lot of abuse. They allow things to just roll off their backs because they know what they are doing is the right thing and is for the betterment of society. While, thanks to social media, we have many leaders emerge and take stands, there is still a majority out there that are so busy putting others first, they aren’t taking a stand for the career they have put everything into. Because of this, I am starting to worry about education system of this country. We are starting a new year, I think with this new year, we need to say something. There is power in numbers and there are a lot more teachers out there than there are politicians. It is time to fight for our jobs. It is time to stand up for what is right.

If you are curious to what I am talking about, here are two examples:

  1. A few months ago my state, Alabama, got a new State Superintendent. Our former one “got it,” he understood students, teachers, and curriculum. Our new one, Michael Sentance, has a degree in American Studies and a law degree. He went from Assistant Attorney General of Massachusetts to their Undersecretary of Education then Secretary of Education. He’s never worked in a school, has no degree, and no experience. He also has no certification. He may have great ideas, but without experience does he even know if his ideas will work? How does this make those of us that are in schools feel? Those who have taken classes after classes on best practices, curriculum, and school management and are still paying for those classes with no pay raise for almost 7 years? But our government thinks that he is an expert yet teachers can’t get supplies and respect they deserve.
  2. Then, Betsy DeVos has been named as the President Elect’s US Secretary of Education. My first thought was to be glad it wasn’t Michelle Rhee. But then I read her resume. Again, a US Secretary of Edu without an education degree. But it gets worse. She has never even attended a public school. We laugh in education at how everyone is an expert because they went to public school, she didn’t. Her kids have never attended public schools. She’s never worked in education. She did lobby for Detroit, I’ll let you read this and form your own opinion.

So yeah, teachers are taking hits. You have to wonder what these degrees are actually worth. The years of preparing for walking into classrooms are for naught. Almost 60% of us have higher degrees, not many professions can boast that. We need to speak up. We need to start proving our expertise. While shopping on Black Friday I saw this quote from Horace Traubel, “If the world is cold, make it your business to build fires.”

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I think it’s time to start building fires. Not time to be defiant (we are teachers, we like rules) but time to take a stand. Stop allowing others to put down our profession and taking away our voice. Naturally teachers are nurturers we put everyone else before us, we chose a profession out of love not need to make a lot of money. But if we keep rolling and not asking for help from the community and politicians while educating them, then we can’t expect things to get better. Start here with signing and sharing this petition to Congress.