The Lives and Dreams of Our Children
Teacher Stories
Submitted by Angela Chan on February 7, 2012
As a classroom teacher, my position would likely not be among those eliminated within the next weeks to close the $61 million budget gap by June. Still, it was painful to read the list of items on the SRC’s “Options Menu” during that Thursday, January 19th meeting. How many more colleagues’ lives will be affected by massive layoffs, and how will the students cope? School police officers, nurses, bilingual counseling assistants, teachers, music programs, athletics—how do they matter in the lives of our students, and how do students experience the loss of these resources and relationships?
Like many public school students in Philadelphia, my students are adjusting to the instability of losing teachers and staff who were laid off last year. This year we are doing our best to live with our losses and work within our new school community. Besides the sadness of severed relationships with caring adults who are no longer here, we are adjusting to the loss of basic things to run classrooms. When we faced a shortage of trash bags, my