Teachers hold our nation’s future right in front of them, as they serve 30—or at the high school level, 150—students per day. We teach academic subjects and implicitly share values and beliefs. Yet, society still devalues our importance in the development of children—paying us with lip service, handshakes, and thank-a-teacher projects, while simultaneously slipping us pink pieces of paper by the thousands. Add in the continued narrowing of our curricula, and we have a dangerous recipe that’s educating children to believe learning is only necessary for commerce.
Many teachers are protesting the direction education is heading, but we need a broader Occupy the Classroom movement to help us become the true leaders of our profession. Teachers as a whole don’t occupy—they are preoccupied. In English, that means "busy with other things often at the exclusion of other things." In Spanish, a more apt translation is "worried."
Teachers live in a space where they worry about every move they make—fearful that some administrator might come out of the bushes with a rubric that decides they're not proficient. We are preoccupied with unproven fads from the latest big expert or CEO selling a pre-packaged placebo, and it’s taking our schools down an ominous, robotic, and scripted road. via GOOD
It truly is a shame that more people either do not realize the effect or undervalue teachers have on youth. The best of teachers represent the best of society and we must begin to allow them to take control of the classroom; one teacher can make or break a student and by failing to recognize and appreciate them, we, in a sense, forsake our own futures.
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