WRAL’s Coverage on North Carolina’s Treatment of Teachers

Link to WRAL video

Teachers say they feel state officials don’t respect them

 

This past Monday our local media outlet WRAL afforded me the opportunity to share my motivations on leaving the teaching profession. During our conversation, Laura Leslie displayed an honest concern for the plight of educators.  The story highlights the disparaging treatment of teachers by the current Governor Pat McCrory. With edits aside, I know all the individuals interviewed for this piece had a lot to share in their discontent of current treatment by the GOP led North Carolina government.  The following are some further thoughts on this topic:

All Educators deserve the right to fair compensation and a livable wage as professionals. And by fully recognizing the power of education, policy makers could better address the diverse societal challenges in North Carolina.

I believe that:

1. A Well funded Education system brings significant benefits to society: skilled workforce, greater employment opportunities, income tax contribution, and an improved social status.

2. Education is a profession of lifelong learning. Highly qualified and trained teachers will generate successful student outcomes. Attainment of additional degrees and certifications should be compensated

3. Its not just about “doing more with less.” Teachers are amazing problem solvers so thats not the issue. Teachers are asked to do more and more with less and less and teachers have reached the breaking point

My Background:

– both parents teachers/admin with 30 and 35 years of experience in Education

– 13 years in the teaching profession with 4 years of teaching experience in Canada

– Master’s Educational Admin

– designed and facilitated 2 magnet elective courses in Physics – Skateboard Science the Physics of Motion and Cosmology

– School based Technology Coordinator

– Presented at NCSTA this past November on Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) as well as Integrating Technology into the classroom inservice training at the school level

– secured Donors Choose grant for new laptops

– Last teacher evaluation I scored a majority of “Distinguished” level attributes/indicators highlighting a high level of my effectiveness as an educator

Working conditions:

– Mon Wed Fri – 14 work hour days at Brain Balance Achievement Centers

– Tue Thurs – stay at school to keep up to date on grading, parent communication, lesson prep, discipline reports etc..

**The second job for many teachers is not a choice, its survival**

– class sizes grew each year, money for classroom supplies fell each year.  30+ is not an environment conducive to providing students the attention they deserve as being a part of a learning community.

Morale

– altruism (coaching, arts performances, academic clubs, and all donated time activities) is a part of teaching accepted by all those who teach.

– the reality of being able to provide for ones family carries significant weight when planning for the future. When both time and money are monopolized it leaves very little quality time with ones family.

My position with respect to the NC governments view of education…

A budget that does not include a pay raise, eliminates extra pay for advanced degrees, phases out teacher tenure and cuts funding for teacher assistant positions is not placing the future of North Carolina as a priority. Teachers are; venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and are the ultimate job creators. Teachers deserve to be shown our appreciation with a respectable wage.  

 

PD thoughts

Throughout the PD meetings I attend I am coming to find that not a lot of teachers have a PLN or are not very into the PD event being attended. Because of this I have ventured out of my district, state (yep good bye NC) and country (hello Canada). I believe it is important to expand outside of all borders and share educational philosophies, resources, tips and advancements in content delivery. There is a real business model here in the US and a lot of the rhetoric infiltrates the conversations especially data driven gains in student growth and the money or the actual survival of the school is at stake. Because of this focus nearly all PD meetings are about reading data discussing data and writing goals to better student achievement. At least that was my experience for the past 5 years.
Don’t worry though there is a ray of hope in here… I was able to choose to take a PD seminar and got to attend a Blackboard site development workshop. It consisted of short how to lessons followed by 10 to 15 min of work time to fine tune what you had just learned. We attended 5 sessions like this and then our final session was a 3 hour free for all on the site where we could create and post and organize the content. Even amongst the varying skill levels a lot of great content was generated. Now because of the session I have a direct online link to students as they have access to all my assignments and notes. The 3 hour block at the end was the key to its success. During this time I had learned enough to really get in to the program. Great use of time and as a class we are now connected to other social media sites and collaborating outside of the classroom environment. Really beneficial!