The Soapbox

Yesterday I went to an elementary school for the first time since I left teaching.. I am now officially a school based big sister; except at the school they just call us mentors. My mentee is in first grade and six years old.

I was a little worried about going to the school, because these last few months I have many times regretted my decision of leaving teaching. But when I walked into that classroom and saw all that stuff on the walls and remembered how many things you have to do at once and how I never felt good at doing any of them and how I couldn’t keep up with the paperwork and how I had to stay after school until it was dark out and then take things home with me and how I had to be a teacher and a counselor and a friend and a parent, all while feeling like a failure because I didn’t care about the “standards”, only about children learning. . . . whew.

I remembered that I was good at being with kids, good at connecting with them, good at teaching them in the ways that our current government doesn’t value. When will people ever understand that they can’t have it both ways? You can’t teach children to be critically thinking beings and stick to some bureaucratic bullshit standardized schedule. You can’t value individuality but then expect everybody to be at the same place at the same time. You can’t hold all children to the same standard, because they have not all lived the same life. When you say that you are raising those who have not benefited from money and class, race and gender, you are speaking a lie. To ask those who are the farthest from the goal to race the hardest is not striving for greatness. To ask the least equipped children to climb mountains, while other children already rest on the plateau is not lifting them up. To place a bar where some children will never reach is not valued competition. These are all lies. Lies for what purpose? So that the same children will be left behind? Or so that textbook companies can get fat off the required standardized testing, while children who are poor and impoverished can pay the price through their lack of learning? Or so that political rhetoric can win races championing standards and goals that do not reflect the values of most parents?

I loved to teach. I loved to be with children. And I am good at connecting with children. I was underpaid and overworked, but I probably would have stayed if . . . if what? What would have to be different to make it work? So much more than I can write at this time on this night. And I must say, that I was in the best school in the world: a place where children and adults want to be and where children are valued and listened to. However, even with my own school and corporation holding an umbrella over our classrooms to protect us, “no child left behind” still crept uninvited into my classroom and destroyed children’s lives: children that I knew and cared about and children that the politicians have never truly known.

It’s mean of me to say all these things, because I know that other teachers are surviving it. I even know that there are teachers teaching new teachers to teach children to be thoughtful and reflective and critical. But it just ate me alive. I know that it eats at them to. Sometimes I think I am a quitter or a failure because I left. Other times I think of the greatness in them that lets them stay.