Reply to DCPS teachers are quitting at an alarming rate, how can parents help?

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Reply to "DCPS teachers are quitting at an alarming rate, how can parents help?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I taught at Ballou last year. In some ways it's worse than the article made it out to be, and in other ways it's better. The vast majority of the kids have really shitty lives: abuse, trauma, you name it. Oddly enough, outside of cursing and being loud, most of them are pretty good. Some of the best behaved ones have the worst personal stories. They make you want to come to work just to help them get the tools they need to escape. But there's about 15% of them who make teaching next to impossible.The things that they do in a classroom would get them arrested if they were adults in the workplace. But even they aren't that bad when you get to know them. It reminds me of that old Looney Tunes skit with the coyote and the sheepdog. They're the best of friends until they get to work and clock in. Then they're at each other's throats. Some of those kids are like that. It doesn't matter how much you talk to them outside of class or how often they eat lunch in your room. Some of them would come to my room crying about things going on their lives. The minute the bell rang and we were in class, they were completely unbearable. I loved working with them, but it takes a toll on you mentally, emotionally, and physically.

I was tempted to quit in the beginning until I got to know the kids and realized that their behavior wasn't personal. When you meet some of the parents, you begin to understand. I didn't have a bad experience with the principal. I felt supported the whole time, but there are limits to that support. It would be a lot easier if they could round up that 15% and put them in small classes of maybe 5-10 max, but that will never happen because DCPS won't allot the funds for something like that. It would be even better if we had some autonomy with our curriculum. When you have 25 kids in one room who are so far behind academically, you really need the time to build up their skills. Unfortunately, that won't happen either.

There will continue to be high teacher turnover until DCPS stops blaming schools for things that parents should be responsible for controlling. Last year there was a metric that required us to have a certain number of students in attendance each day. We were responsible for calling homes and trying to convince parents to get their kids to school on time. Most didn't answer or have a working number. Still, it was on us.[/quote]

Thanks for doing a good job in challenging circumstances![/quote]

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