No Teacher Left Behind is more like it...

I sat down today to make my weekly rendezvous with my online bank account. It is never something anyone enjoys, yet it is inevitable and unavoidable. The worst part of it all is that even before the money grows cold in my account from its travels across the direct deposit wasteland of banking systems, the money has already been spent. Mortgage, insurance, electricity, cable, bills, bills, bills. An endless repetition of a seemingly pointless task that keeps every bill paying citizen across our great country up many sleepless nights wondering just when the money will arrive and if he/she will have the money to pay the bills waiting to be paid. While I have always had the luxury of having a steady homelife, family, and job, one of these three is tenuously hanging in the balance for the time being.

As you can probably guess by the state of affairs in our great country, it is indeed my job. I think I should explain before I continue. My job, next to my family and my home, is my life. My life, my heart, my soul, my everything is with me and goes into everything I do everyday. Some people go to work and stare at a computer for 8 hours, punch a clock, and at 5 o'clock push the power button and walk away from their job. I can't do that. My job is with me every second of every day. Every moment of my day is consumed with the well being of 30 curious, inquisitive minds and their ability to pass the upcoming exams, or their inability as it is in some cases. I go home at night and am unable to "leave work at work" as many people, including my husband, wish I could do in order to get a better night's sleep or enjoy my evening. I am a teacher. While it doesn't make great money, that is NOT why I became a teacher in the first place. I love the challenges, excitement, enthusiasm, and happiness I gain and/or observe daily from my students. Is every day perfect? Of course not. In addition to it being wonderful, it is also the most challenging job I will ever do. But that story, is for a later blog. I love to watch my students get excited about the timeline of California, or the interest they find in the food chains of the different ecosystems around the world. I feel the frustration they feel when trying to divide to no avail, and I feel the complete elation of a struggling student's mastery of the seemingly impossible task of multiplying double digit numbers! I love my job.

However, due to the beautiful state of California's legislators inability to balance a budget that keeps the students at the forefront of it's fiscal importance, education is being cut to make room to spend money on other ventures. With this giant chasm of a defecit, I understand that the missing money and revenue must be cut from somewhere. I know that. Money doesn't grow on trees, and so making it appear is an act of cutting and eliminating "unneeded" teachers and programs in a very large expenditure like education. However, that is not where my issue lies.

The 2008-2009 school year will mark my 4th year in teaching, and I think I am just getting good. While I don't think I am a great teacher, I do believe there is so much more I can learn to be better, I do believe that I make learning fun for my students and that's because I enjoy what I do. I cannot say the same for all of my colleagues. While not many of these "ready to retire" teachers are at my school specifically, I know of many teachers in my district, and in the entire state for that matter, that are merely putting in the time, and getting a paycheck. They don't care about the students, and don't even try to make learning interesting for students anymore. They make it evident to students and staff that they are miserable and that they don't care about their jobs and give nothing but worksheets and spend the rest of their time on the computer, reading a book, or showing movies to the class and ignoring the students.

**Now before it sounds that I am bashing them completely, let me qualify my last statement with the fact that these teachers are probably good teachers burned out by the system and the politics of the job. It's easy to get dragged down in the mire when the politics are so evident in dictating the future of our teachers and students.**

However, due to the fact that these burned out teachers have been in the district for eons and eons, they are high up on the seniority list, and basically, are completely safe. They could do pretty much anything, short of physical abuse, etc, or absolutely nothing at all in their classrooms and keep their jobs, due to the fact that the unions and tenure system have created a giant beyond their wildest nightmares could have possibly prepared them for. While tenure on it's merit had good intentions, keeping a teacher based on time served has truly lost its effectiveness. Instead, tenure is forcing out of jobs young, enthusiastic, energetic, and hopeful new teachers to leave the youth of California in the hands of non-caring, unenthusiastic teachers who could care less whether or not your child succeeds or fails miserably. I ask you, who does this system help? Is it the children, we have been working so hard not to "leave behind"? Is cutting so many teachers that classes will be full to the brim with 35-40 students an effective way to encourage productivity and promote learning?

I feel as if I will lose part of myself if I lose my job. I love what I do. It is unfair that teachers who succeed and enjoy what they do must be ripped from their cocoons of control and stability of their classrooms to find other jobs.

This is all I have ever wanted, and all I have ever done. This is the only career I have ever worked in, and I feel, in some way that I have failed. This has been my dream since I was a child myself. I am trained to do nothing else. Is an office manager going to care that I am AVID trained? CGI trained? CLAD certificated? That I have passed my CBEST, RICA, CSET? The acronyms alone would send any interviewer's head spinning. The world outside the bubble us educators live in would not care about the "eduspeak" or the testing scores I have worked so hard to improve.

So please tell me this...what do I do now?

As I look toward the years ahead with disappointment and fear, I worry that my daughter, someday, will not have teachers to inspire her to learn, to support her when she is struggling, and ultimately care for her the way a proper teacher is supposed to. We are rewarding the mediocrity of teachers by giving them job security, even for a job NOT well done. What's wrong with this picture?

I can't help but wonder how different our schools, districts, counties, and ultimately the state would be if teachers were held accountable for something more than merely their attendance to receive a paycheck?