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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This has definitely not been our worst year with public education.  Our worst year was in 4th grade, with a teacher who refused to make accommodations for my son's ADHD 504 plan and who belittled him for his issues.  This year has been a much safer year emotionally.[/quote]

Building on what you said, instead of the constant hate for teachers as a group, we should acknowledge more often the importance of the job that teachers do. There are few other jobs where the impact of one individual professional is so significant and long-lasting.

Teaching, like all other professions, has stars and duds. Most fall in the middle. Some of us get lucky and have mostly wonderful teachers. Some kids, like my oldest, are generally fine with any teacher. Some kids, like my youngest, rebel and shut down when the feel like failure, so having a disconnected and punitive teacher for a year can create a dynamic that last for years, or even forever.

I can think of few professions where one tremendous professional can have such an impact on a life. Unfortunately, the opposite is true as well. If you have a bad doctor, lawyer, dentist, cleaning person, auto mechanic, or whatever else, you switch. Most people are not going to continue a relationship with a professional that is not offering a positive outcome in the service offered. Teaching is truly unique, because when a teachers does the job, most people just accept it as a professional obligation. The problem comes when a teacher is struggling or having issues with a child or family, it's a year long ordeal that can have major consequences for a children, group, of children, or a family.

I think that's why so many of us come away feeling negativity about the teaching professions. We accept the good, but the bad really hurts.

I generally trust teachers to take education seriously. At the same time, I have multiple children, and I know that there are terrible teachers out there.

It's been mentioned in a few posts, but administrators play a big role in the educational experience. They can make or break a year for teachers, but they don't get the blame they deserve when things go wrong. I have a very specific experience I frequently think about involving my kids' elementary school. When my oldest started, the school was wonderful. I loved all of the teachers, my kids learned, most kids seemed happy, and the school community was diverse, welcoming, and engaged. I felt like I struck the jackpot. Mid-way through elementary school, there was a change of administration in the district and a new principal in the school, and things took a turn for the worse. On top of that, common core was implemented. Every teacher seemed miserable. They didn't respond to emails. Grading was sporadic. They were frequently absent, sometimes for long periods of time. The principal alienated teachers and parents, and it felt like a black cloud was overhead every time you walked into the building.

My oldest moved on to middle school, while my youngest children continued in that environment. Some of it might be the personality of my younger kids, but largely the negativity, teacher absences, discipline problems, and general discontent at every level altered the course of my kids' education and my view of public schools. The crazy thing was that this was the same school, the same community, and mostly the same teachers that were there when my oldest went through. True, one kid had an awful teacher one year on top of the general negative atmosphere, but it was largely the same.

One think I've come away with having experienced this with my kids, is that while people including me to criticize teachers, teachers don't have enough autonomy to do what they do best, which is teach. All of the professional development which takes them out of the classroom, plus policies and training and other measures to make them better take them away from the kids and undermine their professional efforts.

In the end, teachers and students aren't that different from any other group. We all tend to be more effective when we are happy, healthy, respected, valued, and given autonomy to do our best work. Just as an excessively critical teacher can make a kid give up on school and spiral into depression, which is what happened to one of my kids, so too a punitive, critical, and unsupportive school environment, from principals to the BOE, tend to create bad teachers, regardless of individual skill, potential, and commitment.

So yes, I trust teachers to take education seriously. They absolutely do. But they are flawed human beings, just like the rest of us, and are often the products of an emotionally unhealthy environment.[/quote]

Well said. (Another parent here.)[/quote]

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