This is the year that I have been anxiously anticipating. 5 years of dread and excitement are about to come to a head. Ellie starts Kindergarten in just a few short weeks and like a thousands of other Moms, I am freaking out!
From the moment Ellie was born her education has been in the forefront of my mind. What schools are we going to send her too? What kind of teachers do I want her surrounded by? College? Without a question she’ll go to college! NYU, Berkeley, Dartmouth, or even Harvard. A Mom can dream, right?
But am I putting too much pressure on her expecting her achieve these high goals I’ve set for her in my mind? Of course this is another thing I stress about. How much encouragement is too much pressure?
With out a good education from the start how can Ellie, or any child achieve the goals that we or even they set for themselves? It the teachers who we’ve come to depend upon to help our children or even help us help our children achieve these academic goals. Over the last couple of years I’ve come to depend on Ellie’s Pre-K and Pre-School teachers for advice on how I can help Ellie.
Here’s the issue, we’ve put our kids educational future in the hands of these teacher, yet they’re not always treated like others in important professions.
I was asked by the Authors of Mission Possible to think about and answer one question.
Stagnation, being unable to accomplish one’s job at a high level, is one of the greatest sources of low teacher morale. Why do you think this country treats teaching so differently than it does other professions?
I’ve been thinking about this question for the last few days and it bothers me that I can’t find a reason. I approached several of my friends who are teachers. Each teach different grades and subjects, but each have their own take on this. I found it so fascinating that I’m going to break this post up into a series. This week we’re going to hear from a very old friend, Tracy who teaches Physical Education.
I think the teaching professional morale being so low, especially in Arizona, can be attributed to our leaders in education. The administrators from the state level on down. They say they have the best interest of the students in mind when making decisions but their actions do not follow their words. All talk and no action. We see this first hand in Arizona and myself especially being a “special area” teacher and teaching P.E. These are the areas of high importance in today’s society with the rise in childhood obesity, however physical education is always the first thing to be cut!! And you wonder why P.E. teacher morale is low! We KNOW we make a difference in the health and academics of our students yet the programs seem to be disappearing daily!!
No one teaches for the money but once the morale gets low it does make it hard to continue doing something no matter how much you love it. The support just isn’t there. Why this differs from other countries I really don’t know. I absolutely LOVE what I do and I know I make an impact in the lives of so many students, that is why I continue. Maybe we could learn something from these other countries and stop trying to reinvent the wheel ourselves. Obviously they are doing something right if they are always above the U.S. in education.
I couldn’t agree with Tracy more. Why reinvent the wheel? In Mission Possible, authors Eva Moskowitz and Arin Lavinia take us through the same techniques that were used in the documentary Waiting for Superman. They show us that when students, teacher and parents work together learning and performance is going the improve. What most excited me was the THINK literacy program. This can improve reading and writing skills, which is the basis of all learning. What a great read not only for Teacher, but for parents.
Make sure you head over to Mama Mary Show to see what she thinks as well.
I’m also giving a copy of Mission Possible to Monica from @ScottsdaleMama because she has a little boy who is just now starting in the public school district in Arizona. This is a great read for her!
Disclaimer - I was compensated for this sponsored post, but all opinions are my own.
This subject weighs so heavily on me–we need to talk about it over a bottle of wine.
Mama Mary recently posted..mission possible
I am a product of public school but my experience was not the norm….it was a tiny rural school, K-8, 15 kids per class and therefore a small intimate learning environment. When Bella went into kindergarten we were very concerned about the classroom size of 30 so chose to enroll her in private school. So far it has been a good experience but I always wonder if we could also get a high quality education from public school…..
And to address your question, I simply do not know and can not understand why this country does not support teachers above rock stars!!!! I think it all comes down to earning power….high earners are respected more than low earners, even if the high earner isn’t contributing positively to society. It’s just backwards!