What Every Educator Should Live By

Dear Teacher,

I am the survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness:gas chambers built by learned engineers, children poisoned by educated physicians, infants killed by trained nurses, women and children shot and burned by high school and college graduates. So I am skeptical about education. My request is help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.
(anon.)

When in education do we stop to see if our children are learning empathy, kindness, and humanity? Every day as teachers we are commanded to raise test scores. When did education become less about our students and more about a number? As a teacher, I could care less if my students reach an often unattainable bar, but I do care that my students reach their potential as a learner and as a human!

What's the matter with education today?

Well let me tell you. 35 kids in a class with one teacher who is expected to make sure every child accomplishes the same level of achievement no matter what their learning abilities or more importantly their disabilities are. Make time to council the despondent, reach all learning types, get in predictive test, pre-test, the regular test, post test, break down the data to figure out how to motivate the 3 drugged out kids who get high with their parents, attend meetings to discuss how to teach instead of actually "teaching". Let's not forget we are now judged on the basis of how that group of 35 teenagers score on a test that they might or might not be able to read. We are to accomplish all of this before going to work at our second job because this one doesn't pay enough to live on.

I get so tired of the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND argument. Yes children are left behind because policy makers and even the public have not made education a priority. How about we actually fund schools so high school class size can be a 20 to 1 ratio or less. While we are at it let's add on enough books for all students, the ability to make copies without the worry that we have used our alliotted amount, and parents your child is not perfect work with US not against us!!