Education Aggravation: A Retired Teacher's View from the Trenches - A Call to Action

By Leslie K Brooks

The coolest magic beans in the universe...Education . . . has taken a back seat in the United States. Oh, this is long before the pandemic. The pandemic just opened a can of worms long struggling to get out. Sure, everyone talks about education, complains about it a lot but who's really at fault here? And who really cares? All children in the U

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leslie K. Brooks
• Release date: Apr 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985473827

Book preview

Foreword

This book has been percolating for a long time in the coffee pot of my brain. Besides growing up in New Jersey (or New Joyzey to some of you), I have taught in schools in New York and California, witnessing violence and murder firsthand. The school I had a long-term affair with in New Jersey was not that dangerous. Not yet. Violence among youth is certainly spreading, though, and you may be a little nervous. Thank your social media. You’re unwelcome.

I primarily wrote this book because to survive in school as a teacher now, you must become a sheep. Otherwise, you are Baaaa . . . d. Coming from a city mentality, I spoke out in school privately and publicly, in offices, at faculty meetings, to administrators, teachers, friends, learning the hard way. That only made me an outcast. Everyone said lots of things in the teachers’ room and to each other in the shadows of the hallways, but when their chance came to say it to administration, mum was the word. I could feel through my skin the disapproval of many of my colleagues when I opened my mouth to voice what they were whispering.

Now retired, I must speak out. I don’t know where education is going. I’m not sure anyone does at this point. I don’t know if you will agree with me. I just want you to hear me out. I have worked with some pretty incredible teachers, oft silenced. I stand in awe of them. If you ever tried to control twenty to thirty students in a room, you will understand. Sometimes, two or three is even a challenge, as many of you parents know.

I hope reading this book will stimulate some conversation. If you can take an idea and run with it. I’ll have done my job. If it shifts your perspective, even a bit, maybe something will change. Change comes from the inside. The plight of our schools and our children is getting more tenuous. With fingers crossed, I present my thoughts.

Chapter 1

Bad Rap

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

—W. B. Yeats

In Los Angeles, I worked with a physical education teacher at a magnet school. One day she told a girl who was sitting . . . well, lounging actually, . . . on the tennis court to get up.

I don’t have to take no orders from you, bitch, the girl brazenly replied. The teacher called in the dad about the blatant disrespect the girl had showed. He came in, heard the story, and said, You know what? She’s right. You are a bitch. She wasn’t doing nothin.’ Just mindin’ her business.

Of course, minding her business was part of the problem. However, as teachers discover over and over, the apple rarely falls far from the tree. This is just one reason it can be difficult to have an actual conversation with a parent or anyone who will listen. We need to get students to up their game and start taking responsibility.

The bell rings. The students sitting, waiting on the gym bleachers to be called to first period, jump off the benches, rushing over bookbags, each other—pushing, shoving, and screaming towards the door.

The students ignore me and the other pregnant teacher on duty.

Why are they so eager to get to class?? It’s not to learn.

It’s a sixth-grade mob scene. I run and bend to pick up two trampled bookbags and come up shouting, Be careful! Stop pushing! Someone’s going to get hurt! Literally smashing each other through the single door opening. The teacher beside me, very pregnant, hurrying to get to her class in a different wing, also shouts before she scoots out the opposite door, avoiding the fray. This happens daily as students shout up and down the steps, willing to trample each other at the sound of a bell. It’s scary. They don’t listen. They don’t want to listen. The students don’t want your help. The kids want to do whatever they want.

I have just retired from teaching. I am so glad to be out. No, not because of the kids. I love the kids . . . Even when they lie and cheat and don’t try, which seems to be often now. Maybe then I don’t like them quite as much. There are those who are still terrific, who make my day, who learn and are interested, and then there are those that I want desperately to help, to no avail. Can you spell the word, F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-I-O-N? That is how I feel. I’m frustrated. Students are so bored that I could stand on my head and do a backflip, and it does not impress them.

Children today are very numb; many feel they are, entitled; and feel that they have all these rights. They don’t seem to have many interests except maybe friends, games, perhaps sports, and Tik-Tok, depending on their age and parenting. There are just too many distractions in schools that my brain cannot wrap itself around. There is so much negativity surrounding the love of learning that it is a downer and affects morale.

What is happening to our students? Do you know? Where is their curiosity? How can we excite them about education and develop their love for learning? Why do they have such laissez-faire attitudes? Who handles the controls for jump-starting their fires? What can we do? I shout this from the streets, from the rooftops. Everybody just touts the students, pities the students, and blames the teachers. I just crouch down, head in hand, shake my head, and cry.

There are three primary characters we need to focus on: the child, the teacher, and the parents (or home environment, if you will). All the rest fall outside these direct relationships, although they play an all-too-big role in the failings of our public schools.

Here is a quote I picked up, in June of 2021, on the Nextdoor app after the discharge of twelve teachers in a district nearby where I live: A comprehensive curriculum is so rare anymore. Art, music, shop classes and theater classes slashed and cut to stay on a budget because we do not test those subjects. That is all that matters to school boards and administrators. They will try to weather the storm and let the anger blow over, and they will save money every year. There will never be a graphics department again at K . . . High School if it’s cut now. I am sure the cost-cutting affected no administrators.

Affected students petitioned against graphic design being wiped out and protested a couple of their favorite teachers being let go. That would be twelve teachers and twenty programs. It is horrifying, especially knowing that it came during the federal response to COVID, by which 2.7 billion dollars were awarded to funding for education in New Jersey, alone. Where are the funds going? Isn’t graphic design an important skill for the future? Pictures, charts, and graphs help us simplify and clarify ideas, reaching people who speak different birth languages and/or have difficulty with reading; they add a layer of communication and comprehension that for many is easier to follow than words alone.

By June 2021 this school, though public, had not received any of the education funding from the COVID bill, and many in this rural area where I taught and live hadn’t initially seen a dime. 

I don’t want to kick and scream and rail against the establishment like the former Jersey-New York City hippie I was, but I guess I have to . . . a little, anyway. Certainly, speaking up for yourself or the children in school gets you nowhere. Who listens to a teacher? Especially one who steps out of line? Besides the fact that most teachers get a bad rap and get stuck in the middle between politicians, educated elites, administration, the media, and parents (yes . . . clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right) who all think they know what’s best for the students. Don’t take me literally, but I come from decades of experience in the classroom. Only a few of these people have an education degree, are even hands on most of the time, and with some parents, they don’t want to be. It’s baffling. It is a very sad comment on our educational system which is—to bring in a popular phrase—going down the toilet.

Teachers are getting blamed from every direction. I’ve been to Back-to-School nights where barely any parents attended! Of course, we had one parent show up with his two kids, completely drunk. When reported to the principal by the teacher, she was reassured, Don’t worry about it. 

Excuse me, the teacher said. The guy is so drunk that you can get knocked out by the smell of his breath and he’s driving two children.

Don’t worry about it, the principal repeated. The teacher shut her mouth and worried. 

On the other hand, at one of the county’s board meetings, a block of parents were screaming about masks, and the police had to intervene and mediate.

Maybe you’ve noticed this via the news. Teachers are being blamed for not wanting to put themselves in the line of fire for COVID-19, which can be a deadly disease. How dare those teachers speak up! It’s sinful. But from my perspective, honestly, who wants to send their child into the front lines of danger?

I saw a parent on the news who raised hell because the administration found mold in the school and now the first day of class has been postponed. The mother cried, She is missing the first day of school; that means no photographs of the first day. I mean, really? What is the big deal? Isn’t it better that your child is safe? Stop whining.

Oh yes, I know what you are thinking. This teacher has an axe to grind. She has some nerve. Who does she think she is, telling us what to do and what’s wrong with the system? I quote a teacher who rubbed me the wrong way when she said to me, I’m not paid enough to think. I just do what they tell me. Seriously . . . Is that who you want to teach your kid to be . . . a yes man (or woman) with no brains.

That is who is going to be left: teachers trying to bow to the whims of parents, administrators, students, and the media . . . Would that those whims were all the same. Many teachers live in fear of the repercussions that come when following their hearts, intuitions, education, and brains. There are things that went down in school over the last several years that left us saying, You can’t make this stuff up.

We teachers went to school for this. Many of us have masters’ degrees and more. Why is it that everyone else seems to know better and won’t listen to us? Thank you, ex-governor Christie, who made it part of his two terms’ work to downgrade teachers and give them a bad name.

Everyone says, Oh. No. We don’t want that. We all want to teach kids to be critical thinkers, which is supposedly what the Common Core is asking students to do.

Yeah, that’s a brilliant theory, but what if it is too much trouble for students to think? I mean, if they actually want to learn how to think for themselves, then what? Then what happens?! They might rebel against the status quo or you, even, and everyone will try to sweep them under the carpet. Do they have the resilience they need for life’s trials? It really seems that it is too much trouble to power up their brain to think.

Students may intelligently examine a situation and even make sense out of some problems and life, come up with new ideas, get out of the rut they live in, become creative, be kind, be original thinkers, and get us out of the stagnant hole we are all in. (Okay—well, not all of us live there. I don’t want to make gross exaggerations here.)

Society is dealing with . . . hey, people, listen up! . . . a brand of student we have not dealt with in the past. Parents have given birth to spawn that are perfect and entitled! And they are right in some ways. They are perfect just the way they are, but hello . . . they still need to be taught! Any animal, if it could talk to a human, would tell you that its offspring need to be taught the things in their life that will matter for their survival. In a human, that’s right from wrong, kindness vs. hate, safety vs. danger, and politeness vs. rudeness. And maybe a few more life skills. I’m talking basics, here. They need to be taught these life skills that adults hurl by the wayside. Look around, people! It’s a scary, hate-filled world we are living in!

Education has taken a back seat in the United States. People complain about education a lot. Our students and parents, as a general rule, don’t realize how good they have it, compared to other countries. All children in the United States can get an education for free if they will work for it. Yes, that is part of the key . . . work. When your brain works, your life works! We need to drill that.

Why, oh why, do kids have to go to school? your child might ask. To give parents a break, of course, and to have someone to blame if a student is misbehaving . . . those lousy teachers. (I am being sarcastic here . . . I think.) One reason is to allow parents, especially moms, to work because they have to in our two incomes are necessary society. That is not sarcastic, but all too real. However, the endgame of education to better one’s life and increase one’s capacity for knowledge, joy, love, and compassion, and earning a living gets lost. That’s the most important reason children must go to school.

Education, along with the teachers, has a bad rap. Oh, I hate school . . . do we have to? What’s a pencil? I don’t have to write. I don’t need to learn. I can just look it up.

I’m going to be ______. Fill in the blank:

 A YouTuber. 

A video game tester. That’s all I do, anyway. 

Why are we doing this?

We should get paid to get good grades.

I’m not doing that. 

Parents, students . . . oh, heck . . . Americans have all gotten very entitled and don’t understand that working hard is a part of life. Look at unemployment right now. You can’t protect your children from work. At some point, they will have to learn this, either the hard way or the easier way. Yes, there are a privileged few, but most people have worked hard and worked their way up the ladder. Nothing grows in the comfort zone.

Let me be honest with you. In public schools all over the country, the output that many students are giving is getting lower and lower in quality and less and less in quantity (OK. Not all students. Right—yours probably excepted), and in the latest trend in schools all around the country, we teachers are being told by administrations to pass them or emotionally, students will be devastated: socially damaged for life. Articles written in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and the New York Times have documented, debated and even defended student grade inflation for years before the pandemic. The union seems to ignore this little fact, and pushes something they call best practices.

Let’s give . . . a trophy for all!—good grades for all! We don’t want no lawsuits ‘heah.’ (That is here in New York baseball slang.)

Well, that would be fine if the students were making the effort and had a positive mindset, but mommies and daddies are calling and emailing and texting teachers and administrators with excuses for . . . why Johnny didn’t hand in his work. The dog ate it, I swear. I saw Johnny grab the thing out of his mouth, but the dog refused to let go. You know how animals are. 

 Oh, Johnny had a game last night, and he didn’t get home till late and then he had to eat, you know, and I told him he didn’t have to do his work because he had a long day and you’d understand.

Yes, of course, I understand. He should just play sports, rest (and play video games or text his friends or watch TV till two in the morning, which is what he told me he was doing.) What? You don’t think so? Yes, parents! Many of your children are doing just that. And sometimes, FYI, they even tell us the truth about it while the parents lie. 

Well, he didn’t feel like going to school so I let him stay home. What!??

He told me he did it. I saw him do it.  

He was away for two weeks on a Disney Cruise. What do you mean he has to make up that work?

You say he told the teacher . . . what? My Johnny would never say that! The teacher is lying.

He couldn’t remember his password.

What is going on? Does anyone know what is going on? What is going on in our schools, in our homes, at our work? What is going on?

This education we are offering—this opportunity to grow—is not for myself. I already got my academic education and continue to learn and grow daily. It’s for your child. You are not hurting me if you choose to keep your child home. You are not hurting me if he doesn’t do his homework or his schoolwork. This education opportunity is for him. Knowledge is the pathway to potential power.

Are only the teachers accountable? Years ago, when I went to school, parents actually believed the teacher when the teacher said that Johnny fools around too much and talks out in class, or Johnny failed the test. We, parents and teachers, had a common goal, . . . to educate your child and help him grow up to be a fine, productive member of society.

Society