Public School Teachers: The True Egalitarians
Ron Isaac – It may sound simplistic but it's really very simple. As public school educators we embrace children from all the world and they mean all the world to us. Our arms are open, our minds are open, our hearts are open, and, not being charters, all our schools are open to them. Without exception.
We treat all children as potential prodigies.
We take no child for granted and we accept none as lost. All our kids are fit to teach and meant to learn. No child is “damaged goods” to us. No matter their fortune of birth or breaks in life, they are ours as gifts, never to begrudge but always to serve. That recognition embodies our instinct and our attitude.
We are public school educators.
It’s not easy. It demands order, imagination, infinite patience, tolerance, and a big repertoire of teaching strategies. But we keep our “eyes on the prize,” neither distracted nor deterred by the insults and myths hurled against us by the hopeless enemies of public education and against its defender, our union.
As they carp, snipe and slander, we build bridges. As they stroke fallacies we fortify our idealism with results in the classroom. As they fuel the assault on public education, we celebrate our kids and their future. Such is the dividend of our profession.
Our children are our inspiration. Wherever their origin on the map of needs. Regardless of odds and obstacles. The homeless, the emotionally disabled, the wheelchair-bound, the innocents scarred by war, the non-masters of language, the acutely beleaguered and the chronically afflicted. All the inexpedient kids who don’t test well and the ones inconvenient to the budget axe men.
No kid embarrasses us. We don ‘t hide them, make excuses, or dismiss them. We showcase them. Proudly. They are, every one, our bounty.
We are public school educators, after all.
Every day in your workplace, whether a classroom or guidance office, you seize the challenge of doing justice to every “kind” of extraordinary kind, including the ones who don’t win lotteries and tend to fall by the wayside because others allow them to.
It may sometimes be an unthanked job, but it is never a thankless job.
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Comments
Many thanks to Ron Isaacs and to Education News for this lovely piece during a season known for "peace and good will."
In the midst of the vitriol and the blame, an honest piece is what we need for a modicum of balance.
Indeed, even in this era I continue to encounter many individual men and women who do think public school teachers are, by and large, reasonably dedicated and capable persons.
However, as our media insists otherwise, over and over, it is almost impossible not to be influenced.
Did anyone ever say, more eloquently than I, an accusation made multiple times becomes an accepted "truth."
Thanks again, Education News for your willingness to offer your readers more than one single viewpoint.
Lovely, but with some myths.
* Ron describes some educators very well
* the US has thousands of "magnet" public schools with admissions tests that explicitly screen out students with special needs, or with low academic achievement. It is factually incorrect that all district public schools accept all kinds of students.
* We also have so called public schools in some suburbs where the price of admission is the ability to purchase a home that costs a million dollars or more. This effectively screens out the majority of the population in a metropolitan area.
Incidentally, I've been an urban public school teacher and administrator, a local urban public school PTA president, member of Minnesota's state PTA board, and have been asked to speak by public school educators, district & charter in more than 20 states. Our 3 children all graduated from urban (non magnet) public schools, and 2 of our 3 children work in the urban district from which they graduated.
Is this comedy writing?
What you've described are what a very few teachers aspire to, and even fewer achieve. And who isn't grateful for those few?
As to the Unions, which despise the Judeo-Christian and limited government constitutional foundations of this country, you're kidding right? They would be the ones largely responsible, more so than the teachers, for dumbing down and amoralizing both American educators and students.
But on the other hand this piece would have fit nicely into Pravda, where "All is well! All is well!" in our socialist paradise.
The seemingly simple things actually do get up and not so simple.