Teachers for Obama (My Official Endorsement)

There are many things you realize after teaching children. Teaching can change your whole view on life, because you realize how much of who you are is how much of who you were. Let me explain. Each student that enters my room comes in with a different world view. When I tell them to open their books, hand me a contraband item, or even to think about how they would solve a problem, their reactions hinge upon their world view. In their adolescent minds, they are racing. Thoughts may vary.

God, why do I have to do this?

Ok... fine.

Alright, let's do this!

No.

HELL no.

I'll just wait.

Ok! What's next?

I need help but I'm scared to ask.

Oh, no. My mom is going to kill me!

My brain hurts.

I like pink.

As the "leader of my classroom", I am required to guide my students towards certain thoughts. I am required to have my students follow rules, learn the lesson, and pass the standardized test. No excuses, no shenanigans, no nothing. I am expected to teach them the *right* answers and correct them if they are wrong. Going into my first year of teaching, I found this to be a struggle. I was fresh out of college, janitors' union experience in my breast pocket, and ears full of random acts of kindness... aka Liberal-mania. My students, on the other hand, had mothers and fathers who not only supported the war and patriotism, but enlisted themselves to a lifetime of service- army kine, not volunteer kine.

This makes classroom discussions pretty interesting. I so want to present them my viewpoint, because I think it's right. I have had at least two decades of experiences and internal discussions, and I am pretty set in my ways. But convincing them of my viewpoint will only perpetuate the problem of finding truth through authoritative figures. We are who are due to who we happened to be around, chose to surround ourselves with. We are who we are based on what knowledge we had available to us and what information we sought out. Just like how Truth campaigns have a much bigger effect on children as opposed to the "Just Say No" campaign, children (and adults) want to make decisions on their own. We don't want to be told, even though it is often the easy way out. So though it pains me to stay in the middle of discussions, I know the truth (whichever way they interpret it) will conquer at the end.

With that said, I have been leading a double-life in terms of my political persuasion, trying to stay nuetral at school to prevent my own influence on under-age voters. But here begins my official endorsement of Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. As a teacher, student, and future mother (yes, I said the M word), there is NO way our country can go on like this! Our education programs (and positions) get cut every year despite the No Child Left Behind SCHEME. Because if we were really concerned with helping every student, we would not shortchange those who need us the most. Most positions schools end up cutting are the ones for Education Assistants and Teacher Aides, though who help teachers manage the classroom so that more students can get individual attention. And instead of paying teachers more (it's a given that we get paid too little), we pile on more responsibilities (aka paperwork) for teachers and administrators to do. This takes us away from the real goal: educating our children.

The education system, which should be our most valued entity, has suffered during the past 8 years. With a heavy focus on standardized tests (not arguing that we shouldn't have standards at all), teachers and students are pressured to "test well" as opposed to think critically. Teachers who are able to stuff as many facts into their students' brains and have it regurgitated through practice tests (see SAT prep books and prep classes) get rewarded. We get rewarded by being able to keep our jobs and not let our school down. Because when schools do poorly, we get penalized.It doesn't matter that military schools have a transient population of students who hardly get to stay in one place at a time to learn anything. It doesn't matter that my high school had a huge population of Haitian kids who can't even speak English. Schools that perform poorly (don't meet AYP) get on a pobation plan, which means a *private* company comes in and completely takes over the school curriculum. Usually some schools are given a "scripted curriculum", where teachers are told what to teach every day, taking away personal creativity and the drive to even teach. Most of the time, these scripted curriculums don't even prepare our students to succeed on the standardized tests because they are teaching the wrong benchmarks! Fortunately, my school is not one of those schools.

Teachers get no incentive to go above and beyond- other than the joy of knowing they made a difference. I'm sorry, but that joy can't feed me dinner when I am spending most of my time, energy, and money planning wonderful lessons and activities. According to Obama's plan, teachers who do a good job will be rewarded accordingly, not get the same treatment as their peers who choose to do the minimum. Let's bring dignity back to the classroom, where teachers are respected and looked up to. No more "But if you're so smart, Ms. Sun, why did you become a teacher?" and "Those who can't do, teach." I can go on and on.

Our country has dropped drastically in the world rankings when we look at reading, writing, and mathematics. Compare a speech by President Abraham Lincoln and our current president, George Bush. Setting aside Bush's frequent blunders, his diction, rythmn, and sentence structures are incomparable to Lincoln's inspirational quotes pregnant with similes and metaphors that paint images other than "the axis of evil." That reminds me. Note to self: Have students plot points on the axis of evil.

Each year, the Pell grant (for low-income students) is decreased by a couple hundred dollars. Take an average student that attends college for four years, and this adds up. We need to focus more on our country's education, because it is the factory that generates workers for our society. About half of college freshman need remediation! Meaning they graduated from high school lacking the tools to succeed. A similar but smaller statistic is true for first-time hires; they are not prepared to work in the real-world, and most employers spend too much time training and reteaching basic skills, such as writing and arithmetic. This is a huge waste of money. Let's get it right the first time around.

If given the chance to be a mother right now, I would definitely refuse. The times are not right yet. The children today are brought up on TV, the iPod Touch, fast food, and energy drinks. We have so much opportunity to fix things, but it's so easy to comply. At school, we sell snacks to raise money. Most everyone chooses to sell chips and soda as opposed to healthy snacks, because they are cheaper and more popular. But we choose to feed into it. This past week, the 8th grade team sold granola bars, Sun Chips, and juice (refusing to sell junk food). We suffered by earning only one-third of our "might have been" profits if we had sold junk food. But the point is that the kids were hungry and they fed their bodies with nutrition this week. Every day we could be making choices that we know will be right but result in more work.

My point here is that we can very well accept what is given to us. As humans, we love sticking to the status quo. It allows us to feel safe. But I think when we find the evidence too compelling, it's time for us to rethink things. I think it is high time we do something to change things. We need a better education system, we need universal health care, we need to help our environment, and we need to all work together. For too long, we have ignored the quality of our lives and have focused on getting by. I need to be able to enjoy my time at work, knowing my time is appreciated and I am not working to pay off the greed and irresponsibility of big companies on Wall Street.