Parents, I Cannot Protect Your Children
I will do my best. But my best isn't good enough - and I think that is the point I really want to make it here.
Across the nation teachers are fighting back hard. Across the nation teachers will shut their doors and do their best to protect children from high stakes testing, test prep, nonstop district and state mandated testing and more. But - the truth is this, our best is not good enough, because in order to attempt to do our best we are jumping through hoops, shutting our door to secretly do what is right for children, spending our own money on resources for our classrooms and on supplies for children who have none, and we are spending hours and hours gaming our way through "teach to the test" curriculum and massive amounts of mandated corporate formative and summative assessment - in order to attempt to "do our best."
So, I'm going to blunt here. I cannot do my best under these conditions. I can attempt to do my best, but my best under these conditions is not good enough. And my attempts to play the game and resist where I can will not be enough to protect your children from what is happening.
Also - I want to make it clear that by shutting our doors and attempting to do our best, we are able to protect your children a bit more, but shutting our doors and keeping quiet about the harmful practices that have infiltrated our schools is only adding to our problems - if we think long term. Short term, yes - it helps us do what is right for children. Long term, it only promotes a false reality that allows parents to think, it isn't really that bad. Long term, it assists in the dismantling of public education and our profession. Finally, shutting the door doesn't allow teachers to hide from the databases which demand us to enter your child's data on all these assessments. The data mining has begun full force.
So, yes, I'll do my best. I have even refused to administer the common core PARCC assessment this year - I can do that to protect children. But let's be clear on this - even though I have Peg with Pen: Parents, I Cannot Protect Your Children:
