I Mattered a Teacher's Story

In "The New Meaning of Educational Change" Fullen wrote, "Low morale, depressed, feeling unfairly blamed for the ills of society? You must be a teacher." This quote spoke volumes to me as I watched politicians jockeying for position by spewing their recycled political rhetoric, and then launch an all out attack against public school teachers. In years past these attacks had been levied against those receiving social security, Medicare and Medicaid which mainly affected the poor, disabled and elderly. Don't get me wrong these issues are still on the table, but I guess politicians felt they had beaten them with a dead horse and needed another soft target to spark the public's interest so public school teachers was it. They struck with a vengeance firing public school teachers by the thousands throughout the country. In an attempt to reduce the collective bargaining power of teacher unions, such as American Federation of Teacher (AFT) in Texas they claimed the only way they knew to help balance the state and district school budget shortfalls was to rescind some of the benefits they had agreed too. It hurts when the profession I've dedicated over half of my adult life (25 yrs.) to; is under attack by politicians and other's that have no true concept of what's involved in being a public school teacher. We have absolutely nothing to do with the decision making process. First we're told to do one thing and then we're told to do something entirely different. It's almost schizophrenic. To all of my colleagues that remain on the frontlines of public education and those that are planning to take up the banner 'This book's for you.' You might not have control over the decisions being made outside your classroom, but you can control those things going on inside. I provide ways to control student behavior by the design of your classroom to the use of a simple yellow tablet.