I dream of a day .......

I write this with sincere apologies to Martin Luther King – because he was a great, great man. My dream is of a day when education is valued by all.
 

 I dream of a day when children are allowed to play, skip, hop, jump and be children until they are 5 or 6 – not in school at 3 or 4 YOA. 

I dream of a day when excessive testing is dumped where it should be dumped – in the toilet.  I dream of a day when I can teach the way I should – to excite children’s imaginations, to let them puzzle through problems, to use a “teaching” moment to go deeper into life – and not just use a worksheet to satisfy the directive for two grades per subject,  per week. 

I dream of a time when teachers are seen as one of the most valuable professions in the world, instead of being derided, yelled at, evaluated to death, professionally developed to death, meetinged to death and threatened.

I also dream about being able to teach without consulting a volume of rules and regulations – to be sure I am not breaking a directive from the higher ups.  I don’t want to have to stop and think about every word I say, every test I give, every discussion I have – to be sure I don’t offend someone in higher authority

I dream of a nation that will embrace cooperativeness in learning, logic in learning, ingenuity in learning, constructivism in learning – rather than testing for the test and teaching to that test all year. I dream of a day when I don’t have children who lay their heads down on their desk and sob because of the testing pressure. 

I dream of a Congress that can work together and pass funding bills for education. I dream of a Congress that will set an example for the children of the US and stop their fighting, because children are as sick of their fighting as adults are.  I dream of a president who actually knows what it is like to be in the trenches in a classroom, and doesn’t think that education can be fixed with more rules and more directives and more testing. 

I dream of a time when a whole year of learning is celebrated – not because of a test score, but because the kids have loved school and learned!   

I dream of a time when I can actually --- TEACH.  Not practice tests, not benchmark tests, not the latest from the State Board of Education, not pull out programs, not so many other subjects required so that actual teaching has shrunk to roughly 4 ½ hours out of a 7 hour day.  Think of the places our children could go – with more time to let them explore and learn. 

I dream of a day that I can wear comfortable clothes, so I can get down on the floor with my students, and get messy in science. I dream of a day when I no longer have to work 12 hours day and/or 65 hour per week, including weekends!  I dream of a day when my paycheck goes to my family, not for buying supplies after supplies after supplies for the classroom. 

This is my dream.  I love teaching with every fiber of my soul – but it is time to stop the insanity that is the US educational system. It isn't going to get better.  It will get worse!!  These are children, my friends – CHILDREN!  Not robots, not Chinese, not Korean, not Japanese – AMERICAN CHILDREN.  I do NOT care what other countries do!  That is their business.  Our business is to open the minds of American children and get them excited about learning once again!

#i'mtired
#childrenarethesoulsofAmerica