When teacher silencing becomes dangerous…
Since publishing my post on teacher silencing yesterday, my mailbox has been inundated with stories from teachers about being harassed, threatened, and intimidated by school district administrators for posting their opinions about standardized tests, opting out, and other issues of education policy and practice.
One teacher wrote:
I was having a discussion this morning with a colleague and we weren’t sure how to approach this (i.e., teachers advocating for school change as community members that live in the district and pay taxes) without being told our voices didn’t matter because we were employees. Thoughts?
When I asked this teacher who had told her and her colleagues that their voices “didn’t matter,” she replied:
It is the overwhelming umbrella. Nothing verbal, all implied. Teachers are terrified of speaking up because the ones that do have said their evals are getting docked.
This same teacher told me that colleagues in her district feel as though they have “no power,” and have been told that they cannot talk to anyone higher on the administrative “ladder” than their building principals–effectively eliminating any governance role for teachers in school system deliberations on curriculum and policy.
But perhaps the most tragic and heart-wrenching story I’ve heard about the impact of teacher When teacher silencing becomes dangerous… | Eclectablog:
