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I don’t know about the rest of you, but where I come from things right now are crazy. The picture above pretty much sums up how I’m feeling, as are many of my fellow teachers.
The value-added model that’s working so well everywhere else (ha!) is coming down the pipe to us here, while Jindal is pushing his “education reform” bill through to essentially do away with teacher tenure and open up a voucher program for private, parochial, and charter schools. Not that those schools will be held to the same standards of public schools, of course.
At my school, we are getting ready for our high-stakes test. In just a few months, we’ll be moving into a new school. A number of changes have been proposed in our district for the next school year, including doing away with the block schedule to move to a 7 period day. We’re going to be getting our first year’s transitional curriculum to move us to Common Core. Our principal is retiring, so we’ll be experiencing a major leadership change as well.
It seems like every day is something else. Morale is terribly low. I’m hoping that at some point in the near future, we’ll be seeing things in a positive light. Until then, I’m going to write some grad school reflections (THAT is a light at the end of the tunnel that I can definitely see!!) and reread The Hunger Games.
