Letters that will never be sent. Part One
Dear Senator Barack Obama,
In the Barack Obama on Hardball – MSNBC video on YouTube (@ about 17 min. 30 sec. ), you talked about a career ladder for teachers to become “board certified” and potentially get more pay. My mother is an elementary school teacher, and one of the best school teachers I’ve even seen at work: her students love her, her students’ parents trust her to build the basis of education for their nine and ten-year-olds to grow into analytical minds, and her coworkers respect all the new and innovative ideas she brings to their particular elementary school. But she deserves so much more as a valuable educator than what she receives… for her and many other amazing teachers out there, a career ladder is exactly what is needed! Except, I know that Unions and the tenure program are flawed. They are damaging to the students and their needs. I want to explain to you why I am so against the Teacher’s Union.
I believe a country is only as strong as its educational structures. When I was growing up, my brother, myself, our friends/peers had to deal with tenured educators and their corrupt union in middle school and in high school. We found ourselves in situations that directly contributed to my own lack of faith in America, as well as a lack of faith in ourselves, and I was not the only one who felt that way.
Over the next three “Dear Senator Obama” blog posts, I will tell my story, my brother’s story, and my brother’s best friend’s story, just to make my point. In the fourth and finally “Dear S.O.” blog post, I will propose a solution that I would like to see put into action. We’ll start first with my own story…
My own story.
I watched my tenured honors English teacher doing something that my fellow classmate would have been expelled from school for—he held a plastic gun to his temple, and said in front of the entire honors English class, “Nobody move or the Jew gets it. ” Sure he might have been a Jewish teacher, but what he did was not only a gross example of conduct as a role model and educator, but it went directly against our school’s violence and weapons policy—a violation punishable by expulsion. If a student had done such a thing, even in jest, the punishment would have been more than severe for the individual. I reported this incident to the principal, explaining that the “joke” was inappropriate, and that if a student did that, he or she would be expelled; therefore I felt that the instructor should be held accountable for his actions, and punished accordingly, if only to set a good example for the students he had impressed such inappropriate behavior on. The next day, my instructor announced that he and the principal had had a good laugh (discussing my decision to speak out against his “joke”) in front of my entire class. I was so humiliated that I refused to go to that class for the next two days. My mother (astonished that the teacher and principal laughed at me in front of my classmates) went to the school board to explain my situation. She was told that the situation was not something they had the power to change or control. It wasn’t two weeks later that the principal approached me (after an accident in my jewelry shop class that resulted in a wound on my wrist from a belt sander) explaining that I had a simple choice: I could either drop out on my own, or I could go to the half-way high school where they send juvenile “riff-raff.” He continued to promise me that should I not choose to drop out or go to the special school for troubled teens, the school district would be forced to recommend my hospitalization for an “on-campus suicide attempt;” (he told me the school’s councilor had witnessed me inflict the wound on my wrist in the bathroom, to support the school district’s recommendation for hospitalization.) What I had seen in my high school was infuriating, and my acting out against the sorry excuse for administration was the straw that broke the camels back, but I wasn’t going to risk my permanent record. I didn’t want a psychological breakdown on my hands. So I let the school removed me from campus to prevent me from causing them any more trouble. I have went through quite a bit more trouble than that with school officials, however that was definitely the most significant thing that changed my life and opinions of public schools.
Thank you for your time, I will send you another letter tomorrow.
Jenai
