a rant ... if you will

There is a commercial playing right now on TV, and I can't remember who the company is, but it's tag line says that "America's greatest resource is opportunity." I agree with this, to a degree.  I would venture to say that if you went into any upper-level college classroom in the country you would be greeted straight in the face with some of America's brightest, most enthusiastic, most optomistic people in the country -- all with opportunities right infront of their faces.  

No exception would be a graduating class of education majors.  I feel like as a profession, we are some of the most enthusiastic and optomistic people around.  We have the opportunity to change lives, to change the world, right in front of us, on a daily basis, with immediate results.  

So why then the burn out?  Why the negitiveness from teachers?  Why the constant looking forward to the next day off of school?

I never went into teaching because I was excited about dealing with rude, disrespectful students.  It wasn't my goal to break up as many fights as I could on a weekly basis.  It wasn't my goal, to have my first conversation of the day, be with a girl about how I heard her, in one sentence use the f-word three times, the n-word twice, and "ho" four times, and she wasn't talking about Santa Clause.  This was never a goal of mine.  

I absolutely love what I do day to day in my classroom.  There is no greater high in life than seeing the lightbulb go off in a student's head (just think back to a time in your education when that happened -- and go back and thank that teacher.  Do it for me).  

So why this rant, you ask?  Sunday morning my dad was reading the Cleveland Plain Dealer and pointed out this article to me.  In a nutshell, it points out a school in the Cleveland Public school district, where in a third grade class, one student passed the state mandated writing test.  One.  Out of 39.  One.  The article quotes a Counsilman talking about how this is appauling (which I agree with).  How are these kids going to make it in the fourth grade?  Fifth?  Sixth?  In life?  

Believe it or not, I have students who are illiterate.  Not just lazy, not with a learning disability, but illiterate.  Can't read a word on a page.  And because of "social promotion," they now are in my class, failing.  Big. Fat. F.  But, there's nothing we can do about it.  

My dad continued reading the article to me, and when he got to the last paragraph -- a quote from this counsilman, I thought he had made it up.  I truely and seriously thought he was kidding.  Was it April 1st?  Was I on candid camera?  Because this is what it said:

"I'm going to meet with parents, and tell them they need to get on teachers' butts and ruffle their feathers," Conwell added. "The teachers union might be upset about this, but I don't care. It's the children who matter."

*Gasp*  Is this man serious?  Has he been in the halls of an urban school lately?  Has he seen the disrespect?  The rudeness?  The lack of care for education, on the students' part?  Has he seen the weary-eye teachers, exhausted, not from preparing the most fantastic lessons of their lives -- but from breaking up fights in the halls and trying to get their kids to sit down and take the iPods out of their ears.  

I applaud Conwell for pointing out that there needs to be accountability -- but shudder that the idea that parents should go after teachers.  Underpaid babysitters.  Yes, there are terrible teachers out there that should be fired.  But for every terrible teacher, there are 4 more stepping out of the college classroom, rose-colored classes affixed to their doe-eyed faces, ready to change the world.  And to be greated with this -- a finger pointed at them, as if they were the soul cause of the problem.  We are all part of the problem, unless we decide to become part of the solution.

And with that, I will step down from my soap-box.