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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Holding teachers as moral captives. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Holding teachers as moral captives. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Holding teachers as moral captives.

We’re an easy target, teachers. Ask any teacher why he or she teaches or what he or she likes about his or her job and surely the response will be that he or she does it for the kids. You probably won’t hear us say we do it for the money.

This heart that we have in our jobs is similar to that of a nurse or a firefighter. We sacrifice our time, sanity, health and lives for the people we serve. We sacrifice for the betterment of our kids, of society. We even call them our kids; love them (some of them) as if they were our kids.

Why does this matter? We are on the brink of losing control over the conditions in which we teach and the compensation we earn for our work. At this moment, we find ourselves in a moral dilemma between our rights and serving our students. If we fight for ourselves, we are labeled greedy. If we