What a pathetic headline. But its sexy isn't it? It has everything we need for a headline. A "crackdown"...because we want heads to roll and "Lazy teachers"...because we must somehow believe that teachers are lazy. They stroll in right before the kids arrive and hurry up and leave as soon as the busses roll.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
Teachers arrive well before their students and stay well after those students go home. The throw away students that others seem not to care about are the ones that teachers want to take home. While many people sleep, teachers lie awake thinking about their students who don't have enough to eat or come to school unwashed.
While we argue about high stakes testing and teacher evaluation, most teachers are too busy working with students with social-emotional issues to look up to see what is happening around them in the media. As Governors like Andrew Cuomo from New York talk about underperforming results, teachers walk into the classroom everyday even though they get little support from the media or politicians.
After all, our education system is built on a political one...not a pedagogical one.
But one recent newspaper article highlighted how pathetic the abuse of teachers can be in the media.
A Dig From Down Under
Recently, I was working with schools in Australia for 2 ½ weeks. One morning in Western Australia I went down to have breakfast at my hotel and next to the coffee machine was a newspaper. The headline said, "Teacher Warning: Crackdown on Teacher Standards." When I switched to the online version, it the headline had the word "lazy" used instead of Teacher Standards.
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