My son is going into administration and my son-in-law is moving to Portland, in a blue state. I retired two years ago and would not go back into the classroom, not under these circumstances. I was doing fine and did not need to quite and I was popular with both faculty and students. The reason I quite was the pressure on teachers to conform to the ideology or expectations of people who knew nothing about what I do as a teacher nor about my subject area (Latin, Spanish, and Russian). The “district” (a diocese) had standards based on the state standards and when I left in a huff, I demonstrated in total detail to the admins how what I was doing conformed to the standards and what two other teachers, Latin and Spanish, were doing did not. There really is nothing more to say. The classroom attracted time-servers and dedicated professionals in the past; now it just attracts people who are clueless as to what they are walking into or who are desperate. Either way, students lose. Oh, did I say we live in AZ?
Pat’s Polemics
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