If NC Teachers Treated Their Students the Same Way the State Treats its Educators...

It’s fortunate for every student in North Carolina that their public school teachers don’t treat them the way that the state and local governments are currently treating public educators. If I treated my students the way North Carolina public schools treated me, my classroom would look like this:

I would set my students up for failure. Every school day, teachers across the state are set up for failure by being placed in overcrowded classrooms without the proper materials. I taught classes of 32 even though I only had a class set of 30 books. I had one set of books for three separate classes which meant I could not assign any independent reading practice for homework because I needed the books for my other two classes. If I treated my students the way that the state treated me, I would give them a completely unreasonable assignment. I would ask my sophomores to independently read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Middle English and then demand a comparative analysis essay discussing gender roles in three of the tales…within three days. If they made any effort to protest (let’s say on Mondays for example) I would suddenly forget the definition of the word constituent and dismiss them entirely. In fact, I would call them ungrateful and tell them that in this economy, they are lucky to even have a job—oops I mean an assignment.

No matter how well my students performed, I would offer them zero future incentive for their work. Teachers in North Carolina are given practically no opportunity of upward mobility in their careers. Notice I used the word careers and not jobs. Teachers have not been given a raise since 2008 and there seems to be no end in sight for the pay freeze. If I told my students at the beginning of the year that no matter what they did, they wouldn’t be promoted at the end of the semester, very few of them would turn in their best work. It would be like putting someone on a treadmill and telling them to run as fast as they can. Pretty soon they will figure out that they aren’t going anywhere and they will stop running. In fact, many people would just step off the treadmill altogether. It seems pointless to keep running when you obviously aren’t going anywhere. (Yes, I am aware of the weaknesses of this metaphor because many people run long distances for their health. But endurance sports are not for the faint of heart...and they also lead to exhaustion...and sometimes pants-pooping. And most teachers know that the students who will run for the sake of their health (learn for the sake of learning) are rare; wonderful, but rare. I probably have 4 or 5 of them a year). 

In addition to offering them no incentive, I would give my students a heavier workload each year while taking away some of their benefits. Maybe I would ask them to pay for the bus or raise the cost of a parking pass. Because of budget cuts and the loss of support staff, most teachers receive more responsibilities each school year without any extra pay to compensate them for their time. In fact, teachers lose revenue each year through the loss of health benefits and increasing premiums. If we take it back to the treadmill analogy, the state has been adding a little bit more of an incline each year. It makes it even harder to want to stick with it when the incline gets steeper and steeper with no rewards for the work you’ve already done. Teachers are forced to do more with less with no extra incentive. Just like on a treadmill, they are going nowhere. Eventually, they will hop off…or collapse from exhaustion.

Finally, I would make my students feel undervalued and unimportant. In fact, I would make them feel like I did not like them or support them in any way. When they were upset and wanted to voice their opinions, I wouldn’t really listen to their concerns. What do they know about being a student? They are just students after all. If someone gave me some money to put towards my classroom, I would take that money and give some of it to a private school. I would get rid of important programs that kept them from wanting to drop out. I would put them in classrooms with 30+ children and cut the budget to buy them new textbooks. I would talk about how important they are because it made me look really good, but then I wouldn’t fight for their rights when it was important. I would lower my standards until they were laughable and offensive just so it would look like my students were doing well on paper when really most of them were still reading on a middle school level or below. I would pass them along until they graduated without a trade, vocation, or future and then wash my hands of them completely. Then I would deny any responsibility when they were suddenly dependent on the same system that totally screwed them over in the first place. 

Oh wait...The state legislators are taking care of this last one on their own.

Save North Carolina public education. Save it now. Get on your phones. Write some e-mails. This is important. Do it today. And do it tomorrow. And the next day.

Click here for a list of NC House Representatives

Click here for a list of NC Senators

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right…and a desire to know.” John Adams

“Whatever the cost of our libraries [and schools], the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.” Walter Cronkite

“When you know better, you do better.” Maya Angelou

“The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.” Aristotle

"It is all too obvious that our talk of ‘defending democracy’ is nonsense while it is a mere accident of birth that decides whether a gifted child shall or shall not get the education it deserves." George Orwell.