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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I just wish our school board would drop all of the social and political stuff, and only focus kn the core school mission of literacy, math, science and academics/arts.

One of the gold standards for professional and social interactions is that you NEVER discuss politics, religion, sex or race with others who are not your intimate circle.

Our fcps has decided their mission is to put our poor teachers in a situation where they have to not only talk about, but promote and inject into their lessons, those hot button issues of politics, religion, sex and race every single day, whether they want to or not.

The school board knows these issues and themes are going be controversial.  They know that no matter what position is taken, someone, somewhere is going to be offended, enraged, and activated.

Yet the school board makes incorporating hot button social issues into every facet of the curriculum and school culture their entire focus. Why on earth would the leadership do this to the teachers.

Imagine going into work every single day, knowing that your boss and company leadership are going to make you say things, do things and articulate positions that are 100% guaranteed to make one or many of your clients blow their top, send you angry emails, go to your supervisors, blast you online, or go to the media??

We are talking about people who went into their profession because they like to have reading time on the rug or do art projects. Who spend all summer finding interesting ways to talk about Shakespeare.  Who are math geeks or history fanatics.  Who are teaching because they want to coach football.  Or who just want summer vacation and two weeks off at Christmas.

Yet every single day, they have to go to work knowing that our Gatehouse, superintendent and school board are hard at work on finding ways to incorporate the latest social fad or political controversy as The. Most. Important. focus of FCPS.  Not literacy. Not math. Not life skills or trades.

What dread our teachers must have going into work, not knowing when or which day the leaders are going to decree from high the next fad social political idea that teachers are going to have to field, knowing that these idiotic decisions from leadership are going to get them yelled at by some parent, somewhere, who is very justifiably upset that their kids are being taught controversial things that have nothing to do with the subjects being taught, are not age appropriate and not what the teacher signed up to teach.

No one, no where, would be able to handle that constant work stress that teachers are having to manage thanks to our school board and old superintedent.

It is not surprising that many of them are quitting.

They aren't being allowed to do the job they were hired to do, and their bosses are regularly creating duties that are going to get the teachers yelled at.[/quote]

You are clueless if you really think any of this has anything to do with teachers in Fairfax County quitting.  Did the school board suddenly become radically different and radically "politically correct" just this year?  Of course not.

The teacher shortage is a nationwide crisis, primarily caused by crazed parents who did nothing but complain about teachers and school closings during the pandemic.  Teachers aren't paid enough anywhere in the country to put up will any of your bullshit.[/quote]

+10000 No one is forced to say anything.  That is ridiculous.  I have been in FCPS for 12 years and I have never been mandated to discuss co teoversial topics or talk about sex or religion or whatever.  The only minor change is we will be educating kids more this year about the new holidays in the calendar.  That is just basic information, not teaching them religion.

The PO before this one is manufacturing controversy where none exists.  My friends are leaving the profession because they are burned out, overworked, underpaid, besieged by endless parent emails and endless criticism and even when they work 80 hour weeks they are never done.  I literally have never once heard a friend who left the profession in the past two years talk about the SB forcing controversial issues on anyone.  Two of my closest friends retired earlier than planned because teaching online was exponentially more work and more stress.  Two colleagues from last year both left to be stay at home parents with no intention ever to ever return to the classroom because they had come to hate it so much…micromanaged, constantly getting emails from parents about every little thing, never enough time, endless paperwork.  The worst loss was one of our best SpEd teachers.  Pay isn’t even the biggest issue. It’s that the job is 3x more work than it was 25 years ago, with no commensurate rise in satisfaction or recognition or compensation.

[/quote]

Teacher here and this is 100% true.  I quit before COVID and before all the current SB controversies for all of the reasons mentioned above, but mainly the 80 work weeks and the micromanaging (and disrespectful) admin.  The stress was so bad that teachers all over the school were taking anti-anxiety medication - it was a running joke.  The only time admin left the main office to do anything was if they had found someone to reprimand or some way to make more work for us.  They hired coaches instead of more teachers, so we had bigger classes and these "coaches" running around doing nothing but....again, making more work for us, usually forcing us to spend hours in meetings (when we could have been teaching) pouring over data sets from standardized tests in ways that were of absolutely no benefit to anyone.  I am a fully trained, experienced teacher and the county could not pay me enough to go back right now (and anyway, I live in Fairfax and FCPS pays almost 20K less than Loudoun for my pay level, so that would be kind of hard to take).

But of course, these parents who have never worked in a school will continue to insist it is somehow related to politics and the SB, when in fact those things were not even on my radar as a teacher.  I couldn't even have told you who was on the SB, it mattered so little.[/quote]

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