Surprised
Wow, I'm really surprised at everything people have said about public school. I thought teachers would rise to a challenge. I especially don't like the part where someone said the teachers who aren't dedicated teach in public school. The whole reason a teacher would be in public school facing some of these challenges is because they are dedicated to teaching - to teaching everyone, regardless if they can afford it or not.
When I was growing up I was one of those kids. My dad was an alcoholic and left when I was 10. My mom was on welfare for a time. We were poor in the inner city. My public school teachers believed in me, and my public school was there offering a quality education (back then) to me and all the other children regardless of our background. I mean, our education was rigorous, and prepared me for high school, and then college just as well as everyone else. I had problems as a teen. I acted out. I repeated a year. The public schools gave me opportunities to show what I could do, even while demanding I make up those credits with an extra year of school. They provided 'alternative' school, counselors, and services.
I was able to go on and grow up 'normal' after all that, attend college and graduate summa cum laude with 3.98 cumulate average. I was able to have a successful career and ascend to the middle class with values not taught to me by my family unfortunately - values I picked up through education, spending time with a diverse group of other children and their families, and persistence of caring teachers. I was able to change careers and attend graduate school, again excelling with a 4.0 and rising to become a quality teacher, site selected by my school.
I usually don't share personal information on strange internet sites, so I hope you all get the point. Public school - regardless of whether we choose to work there or not - is essential because it serves everyone, regardless of whether their parents care or are involved, regardless of whether their families are rich or not, regardless of whether their dads live at home or not. Why should a child be penalized by receiving an inferior education or the judgmental attitudes of adults because of what his/her parents have chosen?
If public schools are wild with children who don't behave, there are many parts. Part is that family and parental piece, over which we teachers have no control. But the other parts teachers can control. How children behave in your classroom would be your classroom management, and your team work with administrators and other teachers at the school. The rules don't change as far as how children respond or are reached because they don't have a dad or don't have money. If you are firm, fair, and consistent, they respond. It's the same everywhere. All the textbook stuff works with all kids everywhere. It may take longer if you have 33 kids, like I do - I'm sure my class would have been calm in October instead of December - but it all comes together. And lo and behold, the reading scores go up, the math scores go up, all the same things happen when you are practicing quality teaching.
No one should chose public school if they don't want to. But to say the kinds of things or have the kinds of attitudes about the kids seems really unfair. They haven't chosen this path - not to have money, to be born to parents who split up or are not involved in school, to have parents who didn't shop around for a charter. They are kids, aged 5 - 18, with hopes, dreams, fears, attiutes, learning abilities and disabilities, challenges and triumphs, and our job as teachers is to instruct them. Either we decide we are public school teachers who teach all children, regardless of ability to choose, or not. But either way, let's not put those kids down, or the dedicated teachers who are choosing to teach them everyday, for salary and pay like everyone else, of course, but also because there is no place in the world we would rather be.
Donna
