School has started and my retired teacher friends and I are SMILING today! Not that we didn’t love what we did, but read a recent email I received:

Teacher’s Application
After being interviewed by the school administration, the eager teaching prospect said:

“Let me see if I’ve got this right. You want me to go into that room with all those kids, and fill their every waking moment with a love for learning. And I’m supposed to instill a sense of pride in their ethnicity, modify their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse and even censor their T-shirt messages and dress habits. You want me to wage a war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, check their backpacks for weapons of mass destruction, and raise their self esteem. You want me to teach them patriotism, good citizenship, sportsmanship, how to play, how to register to vote, how to balance a checkbook, and how to apply for a job. I am to check their heads for lice, maintain a safe environment, recognize signs of anti-social behavior, and make sure all students pass the mandatory state exams, even those who don’t come to school regularly or complete any of their assignments. Plus, I am to make sure that all of the students with handicaps get an equal education regardless of the extent of their mental or physical handicap. And I am to communicate regularly with the parents by letter, telephone, newsletter and report card. All of this I am to do with just a piece of chalk, a computer, a few books, a bulletin board, a big smile AND on a starting salary that qualifies my family for food stamps! You want me to do all of this and yet you expect me…… NOT TO PRAY???

That about sums it up — except that in a newspaper article today, I read that teachers will not only be responsible for their subject matter and conveying it to students with special needs, they will also focus each month on one of ten “Character Skills: Respect, Courage, Caring, Honesty, Perseverance, Responsibility, Self-discipline, Fairness, Integrity, and Trustworthiness.” The article ended with these words, “The whole school will be involved . . . you have to have custodians involved, bus drivers involved. Everyone has to buy into it.”

Excuse me, I have just one question . . . where are the parents? There is even a wonderful web site that parents can go for help to develop these skills, if they’ll just look: http://www.discoveryjourney.com/

Let the teachers go back to focusing on their subject matter, give them the tools to do it, and the salaries that they deserve (state judges aren’t the only ones leaving public practice because of “low” salaries!), and maybe, just maybe, we will get those test scores UP!

OK, I’m off my soap box now . . . but I feel my blood pressure going up!