Mission impossible

What burned teacher Ellie Herman out after five years, she relates on the Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post, was a photocopier dubbed "La Bestia" in her low-income high school in Los Angeles. Herman, decades-long TV writer/producer for shows like "Desperate Housewives," "Chicago Hope," and "Newhart," switched in 2007 to teaching Drama, Creative Writing, English 11, and 9th-grade Composition at a South Los Angeles charter that was 97 percent Latino and where 96 percent lived below the poverty line. "The day I definitively and conclusively gave up, it was after six o'clockand I was making 100 copies of 11 different scenes for my Drama class. I'd been at work since before7 a.m.; it was dark when I arrived at school and dark now," Herman writes. A self-professed workaholic, she found that in teaching, "no matter how fast or long I worked, I could not get everything done... Everything felt like an emergency." On that particular day, La Bestia jammed mid-job and Herman, "just stood there. All I could think was: 'I can't live this way'." She did not renew her contract. When teachers in other countries aren't in front of students, they plan curricula, grade papers, call parents, conference with students, create assignments, meet with other teachers, innovate, and learn. In the U.S., Herman says, public school teachers get no time to do the other half of their job. More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

Published by LEAP

Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP) is an education support organization that works as a collaborative partner in high-poverty communities.