No one to blame but ourselves.

While I have been on a leave of absence from teaching, I have had time to think a LOT about whether I wanted to go back to teaching at all, and if so or not, why? I've also had time to discover education from a parent's point of view, as Sam is starting kindergarten, along with many Facebook friends who are college professors, fellow parents, fellow k-12 teachers, homeschoolers, charter school supporters......  And while I was pulling weeds in my driveway this morning, I had an analogy pop up in my head that really defined a cognitive dissonance I've been struggling with since my first year teaching.

As a first year teacher, I knew I was effective.  I knew I was better than many of my music colleagues in the district, and that even with first year flaws I had nothing but improvement in front of me (and yes, I was full of myself).  I also did not see the purpose of a union, as I had a principal who stood up for us when he needed to, gave constructive criticism and redirection and was generally good to work for.  Then I was laid off.  And I had the crushing realization that it didn't matter how good I was, as long as I was at the bottom of the seniority list, I would always be the first to go.  I began to resent the union dues that were deducted from my paycheck, because what good did they do me? I lost my job anyway!  I didn't learn the value of the union until my husband's district decided to punish him for "choosing to join the Army" (an administrator actually said that out loud to me).  And then I realized that the definition of "bad teacher" is one of the most subjective terms we use in any conversation about education.

A crack in the pavement.

You see, public education is NOT broken.  When you consider the vast amounts of children that are educated within this system, and the lack of infrastructure and social safety net to assist, we do very well.  People will talk about how we don't test well compared to Singapore, or Japan, or England or [enter country name here].  The fact is, even in "the good old days" of [whenever *you* went to school] we have NEVER tested well compared to those countries.  Because our culture and way of educating is not easy to quantify.  We value creativity and innovation.  We educate in a way that reinforces those values.  We developed things that the world cannot function without, and the vast majority were educated in the public system.  That's a huge accomplishment and something to be proud of.

But there are cracks in the pavement, cracks where weeds have been allowed to grow.  And it is our own fault as a profession that we have allowed them to grow.  The cracks in the pavement are that *one* teacher you know, statistically insignificant, who really should have retired five years ago.  The college student that should never have been allowed to graduate with an education degree but the department needed the money.  Bad attitudes in faculty, principals that bully, low morale. Teachers who started out well but didn't get the support they should have and then floundered or quit.

Whether those people needed to be fired (the reformers position), or given direction and help (the union's position) doesn't matter.   Because it doesn't matter if they were good teachers at one time, or if they never were.  They are the cracks in the pavement.  While I was digging the weeds out, I noticed that the vast majority of my driveway was still looking decent.  There weren't that many weeds in the cracks, just a few.  But where I had not pulled the weeds right away, they had gotten huge and started spreading over the good pavement.  Yes, I could put poison on the weeds (removing the reformers and NCLB) or just keep on pulling them (futile as long as the cracks are there and the reformers are spreading fertilizer/fear on them), but what would be REALLY silly is to dig up the entire driveway and re-pour it just to fix a few cracks.

But we cannot ignore the cracks anymore.  The weeds are starting to take over and spread the cracks apart that will eventually force us to dig up the driveway.  And the weeds are taking over because like an overworked mother, teachers are more worried about the children they have to take care of *right now* and the weeds can wait.  No longer.