Recidivism.

My voice as a Special Educator has been silent.

I have been contemplating.

         Four months in from the beginning of the year, and fifty-four applications out to quasi-open teaching positions in a down economy, in the midst of the school year – and truth be told, I am discouraged. I have consciously approached my drive to teach with an open-minded understanding of new legislative measures rising to the surface, of the seasoned educator’s apprehension toward me as not only a ‘newbie’ but also toward my thirty-something adulthood, late in the game presentation to teaching while holding a full time job.  I get it. I understand that we all have motivations; as individuals, companies, institutions…yet the irony is so loud my ears are bleeding. 

         I was instructed in graduate study to understand, learn, interpret and embrace the Common Core curriculum as it would be landing on the front lines of education at just the time I sought employment as an educator.  So that is what I did.  I read, learned and interpreted to the extent one can interpret vague and suggestively, all-encompassing language.  Mind-engaged and mouth shut, I reflected on my time at the front of the classroom, from the semi-circle instruction vantage points, and while I would make my rounds through each students’ progress, each day.  Ambiguous terms, uncertain approaches at instituting the Common Core standards and a smell of fear from students and teachers alike across what I would imagine to be all 46 states that accepted this learning initiative, has left me with nothing to say.

         My entire thesis, my personal teaching mantra, my mission to advocate for families and students is founded on principles of individuality within a community, due to the strength and bonds of that community.  It is our likeness with each other that allows us to identify the needs of another, and those freedoms afforded to the thinkers that enable individuality.  The bonding agent of individuals is their family, however family might be defined - that is the foundation that maintains stability.  I believe in my approach as evidenced by students from all walks of life, dealing with extraordinary circumstances, telling me “thank you” because I had taken the time to listen.  Where they had lost hope and stopped trying, their faith in the process of learning had been renewed, if only for that one day, in that one classroom, and maybe because of me. The moment I completed my degree however, when the thought that my new licensing as an educator meant I was finally “qualified” to do something substantial in life had settled in, I became a piece of the machinery. That mass of brain matter that educators used to be able to lead with, now inexplicably governed not by founded theories in education, but by hot topic reform that classifies educators and students alike, as being the unindividuals in a mountain of good intentions with voids of application.  Dictated curriculum content in the classroom, debilitated autonomy, and an absolve of parental involvement in their own children’s education appeared on the set of this national movement and is likened to a darksome sociology breeding its own interpretations of how to educate the mind without including the person.  We have, as a society following the rules of our government – be it local, state, or federal – effectively dismantled our education system.  And the recourse? Educators are leaving the practice in droves.  If they are close enough to retirement and possibly, before their 401K’s are also dipped into because of a federal deficit – they are pulling up stakes, packing up motivational posters determined incapable of motivating, and going home.

         The intrinsic values of what would make me a great teacher, tell me that should not be the answer though.  What of the students nearing their senior year? Will they not be shocked and debilitated to find that standardized initiatives do not necessarily entail or enable logical application to the workforce? Or of the 3-8 grades who will sit through days of ELA and math testing next week in response to the Common Core? Reshaping should not have entailed redefining; or restricting. Will these students not be the ones to suffer the losses of the federal government funding private business for creation of “equal testing”, while divorcing the moral coding and familial support of local districts, and instead, subsidizing, or paying alimony to the mother of education – the school?  They will. They already are.

         How then, does one answer such a plague of force?  Such devolvement? I was not invited to this power-struggle and do not subscribe to the addiction of control.  Inadvertently, because I am first a parent, and then an educator, I am actually being told to leave the table.  The only answer I can remedy my quandary with has been to pray, and I shudder to think how dangerous a situation that discussion is.  No prayer in the classroom, no God in schools and red, white and blue in succession are now suggestive.  What have we become? And oh, what a very perilous path we are headed down. In terms of what is not titled “common”, I caution my own involvement in such idiocracies. Parent first. Just as I approach my own home; my learning environment, so should we yearn to take back the system of educating our children. By being parents first.