I’m so fucking done.
I’m done being treated like I’m lazy and don’t know what I’m doing.
I’m tired of my superiors treating not just me, but the rest of the staff, as if we are not the experts in our fields; as if we don’t know what the issue is with our students; as if we don’t care.
I care more than I probably should about the children I see every day. Just because I don’t have the time or energy to go to their sports games does not mean I don’t think they’re the brightest stars in the sky. It doesn’t mean I don’t have faith in them as scholars. It doesn’t mean I don’t think they can do any and everything they want to with their lives.
A lot of people like to paint teachers as lazy fucks who just want a summer off. The people who say that should be ashamed of themselves; they’ve never had to look a four-year-old in her black-and-blue eyes and tell her, “Good morning,” as if nothing is going on. They’ve never had to or chosen to read to a child, much less teach them to decipher letters on a page.
My superiors are obsessed with data, yet cannot read the room. They can print off as many data sheets as they want, but none of them are going to say the honest truth: at least half of their staff is miserable and, perhaps like myself, wish for a semi to hit them on their way to work. My superiors are obsessed with numbers that only tell us we are doing nothing correctly, that our students are failing miserably, and that if we just spend a little more on a program or a little less on teacher pay, we can close these achievement gaps.
But, see, the achievement gaps are due to factors that we refuse to see. We refuse to acknowledge the emotional toll that Covid-19 has taken on these children. We refuse to connect with parents in order to offer them higher education. We refuse to hold parents accountable when they send their child to school with no backpack.
It is getting to the point where I dream of catching Covid, of falling victim to a shooter, of being struck by a massive vehicle. I simply do not wish to be alive anymore.
