About Teaching

A friend sent me this story:
Teaching Is Like an Abusive Relationship

I read it.
Then I read it again
It's not from an American source, it's from the UK. And teachers there are seeing the same behavior or worse than we are experiencing here. Just this week the head of Special Ed at my school, who runs the BIC or behavior intervention room for seriously mentally ill students (she has three at the most at any one time) publicly complained about having to teach my subject, high school art, in her contained setting. "It's hard." She said. "I don't know how to handle things," she whined. She ignores that quite often she orders seriously disabled and quite disruptive students into our classes of 30 or more. Furthermore she wants to bring her class down to one of my teachers and drop them off for art ignoring that this teacher already has a full class of 30 students many of whom come to her with paperwork. But because she has the ear of the administration and a doctorate in Special Education, I'm sure they will listen to her first and ask us later. I keep telling my husband I can't do this anymore. We're going to be heading for a new schedule next year. Instead of 90 students a semester I will see 180. That means twice as many students will paperwork. Inclusion is not working and although it makes the parents feel good, it causes a great deal of resentment by the other students who often wait a couple of years to get in a class and then have it constantly disrupted by special needs students who have no ability or interest in the class.

This is why our education system is failing. When we place the needs of a small group who will never work outside a sheltered environment over those of the kids we will depend on to keep this nation on its feet, we are investing in a losing cause.

God help us.