My Voice

A few days ago, my local newspaper, The Ledger, ran a letter to the editor that I had written regarding the deplorable and disheartening $3.4 billion in education cuts our new Governor is proposing. I was pretty excited for a few days, then came back to reality to find everything pretty much the same as before.

I'm so tired.

Tired of being treated as if I should be glad for any scrap the government wants to hand me. Yes, my salary is paid out of our state's taxes. So are a lot of other people's. But I pay taxes too. I pay the salaries of the legislators who talk about "special interests" and refer to state employees as if we are parasites sucking the lifeblood out of the people of the state. Last time I checked, WE are people of the state. Without the infrastructure of state government, all that's left is anarchy.

I'm tired of people who have no clue what my job entails telling me how to do my job. On a daily basis, sometimes it's parents or students. I know what it takes to plan, prepare for, and execute effective lessons and provide what I hope is a quality education, but sometimes I don't think they do. Which is fine...but I don't tell the doctor what pills to prescribe, or a lawyer what defense to argue. And I understand that parents and students are concerned about their education, so I deal with it, even when it annoys me. What I can't deal with are politicians who think it's their divine right to hover over my shoulder and tell me how best to provide an education, when 99.9% of them haven't set foot in a public school since they themselves graduated. I went to college for four years. I've had over 700 hours of ongoing education and professional development in the 5 years since I started teaching (do the math; it comes out to almost nonstop continuing education). I'm not only qualified to teach in several areas, but according to the state of Florida, I'm highly qualified. So listen to me and my colleagues, most of whom are even more qualified than I am, when we say that you, legislators, and you, Rick Scott, are ruining.education.in.Florida. We know what we are talking about. You don't. Back off.

I'm tired of hearing about how horrible public employee worker's unions are. I don't see any legislation trying to limit the bargaining power of the auto worker's union or the AFL-CIO. Why are we different? Why should we be denied a voice? We provide essential services, without which the state would not be able to function, and we provide them to everyone: Democrat, Repulican, Teabagger, whatever. We don't get to choose. If Rick Scott's grandson walked into my classroom tomorrow, I would be professionally and ethically obligated to provide him an equal and equitable education, no matter if I personally would like to move to another state just to avoid the pit of despair Florida is in danger of becoming at the hands of his inept grandsire. All of the people who sit in all of the offices and do all of the tedious paperwork and phone answering and filing and databasing and everything else it takes to run a state the size of Florida--they do their jobs for little pay and no gratitude. Why are all of these people not worthy of the right to stand together and be heard in their demands for equitable wages and working conditions?

I'm tired of the general apathy toward education that seems to plague our society today. Don't tell anyone I said this, but teenagers aren't dumb. (kidding, kidding...mostly) For the past few years, studies have shown that teenagers' stress levels have risen as the economy worsens; though many of them aren't directly affected by the unemployment rate or the housing crisis, their parents are. It's not just adults losing their homes and jobs, it's the entire family, and that means the children. I digress here to show that children, teenagers especially, have a fairly keen grasp on the currents flowing around them, especially when it involves them. When children see on the news that education funds are getting cut (again) or that teachers aren't getting a raise (again) or that Florida schools are among the lowest in student performance (again), they get the message that education isn't important. When they hear their parents talk badly about their teachers and the school system in general, it sends the message that education isn't important. What else are they supposed to think? Children can do basic math--in $5 billion of budget cuts, $3.3 are from education. That's by far the lion's share of the cuts, and hey, if our own governor thinks we're not worth the money, then why should the kids we're trying to teach?

I'm tired of hearing about running the government like a business, or (worse in my book) running schools like a business. It doesn't work people, for the simple reason that we don't get to pick (which I may have mentioned previously). We don't get to throw out a damaged product or fire a nonproductive "employee." I have to take every single student that walks through my doors. Some have two married, working parents, some are from broken homes. Some come from affluent backgrounds, while others have to work to contribute to the family income just so bills can be paid. Some are orphans, while others others are homeless. Some have the newest clothes and designer brands, some wear the same clothes from middle school. Some have children of their own, while others are raising younger siblings, nieces, and nephews. Some will go to college, others won't even graduate. Some have already been to jail, already been in the system almost as long as they've been alive. You name a situation, and a teacher has seen it walk through the door of his or her classroom. I have students who I know are not going to pass a test or even the class, but I can't "throw them out" to make myself and my finished product look better. I have students who will put their heads down and go to sleep rather than take the FCAT, but I can't "fire" them from my classroom for poor performance. I have to give every student, regardless of ability or interest, the same opportunity for success. Ultimately, however, I can't force them to do well in school; so many other factors are essential in a child's success that go so far beyond the time he or she spends in my classroom each day. And this is just an example in education. Other government workers face the same limitations. Firefighters don't get to choose whose house fire they extinguish. Police officers don't get to choose who to protect and serve. When my husband rents a car to someone and they don't pay him, he can choose not to do business with them in the future. If he has an employee who is habitually late or absent from work, he can fire them. I don't have that option, and until I do, until every state employee gets to choose who we do "business" with, stop making that comparison.

I'm tired of all of these things, and worse, I'm tired of feeling like there's nothing I can do about it. I've always heard that if you don't vote, you don't get to complain about the way the government is run. So I voted, and Rick Scott won anyway. I don't like what he's doing, so I wrote to the paper, and my letter got published. Now what? Anything I can do just seems so small in comparison to what it feels like we're facing. I feel like I have so much energy and passion about the subject of education, and I'm terrified of where it's headed, not just for myself but for my students. I feel like I have so much to say about it all--but who do I say it to? I don't even know where to begin.