Have you ever heard of this saying? Well today- I am definitely the statue. In fact, I have found that most days in teaching, I am the statue. I got an email today about my failure rate being too high. This means too many of my students are failing. I was then asked a number of questions in the email all about what I am doing to get the failure rates up. I am expected to report my answers tomorrow. Now I know I need to be encouraging my students to get better grades and contacting parents if necessary. But I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to feel like it is somehow my fault my students are not passing (at least that it is completely my fault...) A lot (I mean about 7 per class....) of the students come late every day, or do not come at all.(about 5 do not come at all) A lot of them are just lazy and do not do their work. I do not have time to call 40+ parents (yup- the failure number is way high... about 40...) and talk to students individually every day about what specific things they are missing. It drives me absolutely insane. It is nearly impossible... but sadly, someone has to be blamed in the US public school system and the ones at the lowest end of the totem pole are teachers.
I could literally go on for hours about this but I won't bore you. Just next time you hear someone is a teacher, give them a hug and thank them for trying. It is so hard to put your heart, soul, time, effort, LIFE into something with so little appreciation.
So, today, like many others I am the statue. Maybe I will shoot for pigeon status next week...
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