In the last month of 2007, I finished my first real semester of being a teacher. It was an accomplishment that I chalked up to being my most difficult and most rewarding. I couldn’t wait to start the next year, and I worked all summer to prepare for it–going over the things I didn’t like and beefing up the things I did like. Most of all, I couldn’t wait to spend another year with preadolescents, a group of misunderstood people that needs our attention more than most. The challenge of getting them to see the world the way they did when they were younger was the most important in my book as a science and math teacher, and I reveled in every victory.
I will occupy the DOE in April because that has all been stripped from us. I’ve been through the most disheartening experience as I watched myself and my colleagues pressed under the new weight of heavier and more crushing mandates, which told us that we simply didn’t have time anymore to let our kids find joy and meaning in their learning. If we chose to “go rogue,” and simply close our doors to the orders from above, sooner or later we would be caught and corrected. Not only that, but now our kids were being forced to take more and
