Tag Archives: politics

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Haters Gon’ Hate… (but it still hurts when they do)

The Nobel Prize winners have been announced (Yay, smart people who are changing our world!)

One recipient, John Gurdon, is receiving extra attention not because of what he did but because of what was done to him. Someone dredged up an old report card of his from high school in which the teacher lambastes him for being a rebel, an outside-the-box thinker. The words that the teacher uses are horribly unkind and, if they were written today, the teacher would lose his job before he could say lawsuit.

One of my favorite FB sites, “I f*cking love science” posted a graphic with the remarks paraphrased– check it out here. I have no issue with the comments being brought to light. I do have a problem with the comments that follow the post.

There were some positive posts:

And then there were some not-so-positive posts:

And my all-time favorite:

Don’t forget the one that caused a WTF, YOU IDIOT! moment:

Huh? This doesn’t even make sense at all. Respect has to be earned. I work hard to ensure that my students respect me by being truthful, straight-forward, and fair. I expect the same from my students and won’t tolerate any less. I’ll be damned if I will “respect” <— WTF does that mean anyway??— > my students just because they might be a Nobel prize winner or president or a tyrannical dictator someday. If they are not at the level they should be, I let them know as kindly as possible.  But they still need to know. How can you improve if you don’t know the truth about your abilities?? I’m so tired of  being expected to coddle little (insert student name here) when they really need the truth and encouragement to get themselves out of the hole they’ve been allowed to dig for themselves.

Okay. Rant over. Wait… maybe not.

I know that I shouldn’t let it bother me, but it does. Every day people get bombarded by how horrible teachers are. Every day. You rarely turn on the news and see something positive about them. Every day I see the media/parents/students/my favorite authors talk about how horrible educators are.

Nobody asks us. Nobody tells our story.

Do you know how many principals I’ve had in the last 6 years (just in one district, mind you)? Four. Four changes in command. Four people with very different management styles and different focuses for the school vision. Four adults who my students feel have abandoned them. I don’t think everyone realizes how much kids yearn for stability. Sometimes school is the only stability that they have.

Did you know that, every year, teachers are told that their methods (that were successful the year before, btw) are now COMPLETELY wrong and have to be changed immediately? Not just a few aspects of their methods– oh no– everything that they do. Never mind the fact that they are master teachers and can show it because their students are LEARNING beyond the test. The new strategy du jour is more effective than anything else (even if it is largely untested).

Did you know that most teachers provide the basics for their students in the classroom? If I want to do anything with my students beyond pen and paper learning, I have to purchase all of the supplies. According to the district, there is not a budget for those things. Asking my students to bring their own doesn’t usually work– very few do. One teacher I know actually got reprimanded for asking students to bring supplies (not with my current administration– they’re lovely).

Did you know that, because of legislative budget cuts, most teachers in my district are getting paid much less for doing more work? Yet we still do it. Teachers are on campus at 6:00 in the morning working hard to give their students a head start. They stay until late grading papers and making parent phone calls. (I don’t even want to get started on parent phone calls. It is apparently the teachers responsibility to let the parents know if their students aren’t passing classes. If they aren’t passing classes, it is because teachers haven’t made the lessons entertaining or engaging enough. Because, you know, jobs are ALWAYS going to be entertaining and engaging… bah.)

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I guess I’ll close with this. Teachers are PEOPLE. Yes, they are imperfect, but who isn’t?  So many forget this, I think, and are vitriolic in their criticism. If someone did tell the teachers’ story, would anyone listen? Or is it so much easier to have a scapegoat for society’s ills?

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Tragedy in Aurora (A Little Political)

This morning I heard news about the horrific tragedy in Aurora, Colorado. You can read the article on CNN.com if you want more information. An armed man entered a theater full of patrons who were watching The Dark Knight Rises midnight showing. He wore a gas mask. After he entered, he threw tear gas into the theater. He then proceeded to shoot, killing 12 and wounding 50 people. The  descriptions of terror given by the victims horrified me. They also made me so very, very angry.

What in the world possessed this man to take the lives of so many people into his hands? What made him so disturbed that he felt the need to perpetrate so much destruction? Who made him the person who chooses who gets to live and who dies?

I know that mental illness causes people to do commit atrocities and that, sometimes, we don’t discover the motivation behind such acts. He may not even know directly why he broke. It just isn’t fair. Those people were excited to see a movie that they’ve probably been waiting a while to see. They stayed up all night, waiting in long lines, and enjoying the comradeship that comes with being around other fans. Families, friends, and strangers were drawn closer together because of the time spent in anticipation of the opening of this movie. So much synergy destroyed by a single act of violence.

I have never been one who advocates gun control. My family is from the country. Usually hunting and country go hand in hand. My husband has guns; he was in the military and hunts on occasion. I’ve been around guns for as long as I can remember. I have chosen not to have my own guns because it never really interested me. The thing is, gun safety has always, always been taught and we are doing the same with our daughter. Respecting the power of firearms is the only way to be safe around them. Now, though, I wonder if anyone focuses on that anymore. Should there be stricter rules for owning a gun? Should there be a limit on how many guns a person can own? Should a psych evaluation be required?

This is the third time in my life that I’ve asked these questions. (Political viewpoint coming up, bear with me.) I am not big into governmental control over certain things. Growing up around so many responsible owners of firearms gave me a sense of security. If everyone was like my family then there would be no need to control guns. I am doubting that now. There have been entirely too many instances of mass murder by one person with guns. Where do we draw the line? I am not saying that guns should be banned. I think they are entirely too easy to acquire. I don’t have the answer about how to fix this problem, though I wish I did.

Then I started thinking about what people will say about this tragedy. Right now it is fresh, but in a week or two, it will be over. There will be another event somewhere that makes this one fade. That is when the comments will come, making light out of the situation. I know that humor is a way for people to deal with input that their minds are having difficulty processing. What about those who have lost family and loved ones? This will NEVER be humorous to them. Ever.

I know people who had family involved in the Columbine shootings. One of my friends used to coach swimming there. Her mother worked at Columbine when the shootings occurred 13 years ago. She still cannot talk about it because the pain is so close to her heart. You can see it in her eyes. Our students were babies when the shootings happened. They sometimes joke about another Columbine. It is not real to them and therefore it is a source of macabre humor. They don’t know how much it hurts.

I guess the point of this rambling post is that we should not forget this. There has to be something we can do to prevent events like this occurring. I don’t want to live in a world where fear permeates every thing we do. I refuse to be afraid.