The second one was asking us to email Senator Pate, advocating for our Instructional Assistants. They want to increase our class sizes here and take away our support. This is in addition to freezing our pay for how many years now, cutting our financial support (teachers at my school are issued a whopping 2 reams of paper a YEAR here!), changing our curriculum, giving us furlough days... The list of kicks to the teeth goes on and on....
Anyway, I thought I'd share my email I sent. I did a little venting in it:
Senator Pate,
As a public school educator I am writing to inform you of the fact that I, like my colleagues, do not want to lose our instructional assistants. They are a truly necessary part of our schools. Especially at the rate that class sizes have increased. We don't have seating, supplies, or materials for our children, now you want to take away our support, too?
I realize you are not, and have never been, an educator. I further realize that you have no idea what it is like to be a teacher. You have not spent time trying to reach, teach, and inspire young minds. You haven't dealt with the ramifications of what goes on in these children's home lives. You haven't dedicated years of your life to finding ways to make learning inviting and meaningful to children who would rather be at home playing on their Xboxes. I know you haven't an iota how much extraneous paperwork is required of us, let alone how overly assessed our students are. You don't see them come off the bus and throw up from nerves as they take a single test that will make or break their success for the entire school year. You don't have to try to teach the child who found a man shot in the head on their front doorstep on their way out to the school bus. You don't have to work with the child who spent the night trying to sleep on their floor because there were people shooting into houses overnight. But I do.
I am well aware of the fact that my school isn't like most others. I teach at a central-attendance school comprised of children who live in the projects -- if they have a home at all. I've had students who lived in their cars over the years. I've had a student who came to school after watching his father gunned down in the street the night before. We've dealt with children trading pot for PopTarts in the restrooms. Not every school deals with these issues, but mine does. And school is the one safe place for many of these children. The meals they are given here are, for many, the only meals they will get each day. The hugs they get from their teachers and instructional assistants may be the only hugs they get today. We make a far greater impact than you give us credit for, and the cuts you're making to their education is much more profound than you, perhaps, comprehend.
But I digress... My point in writing today is to suggest to you that at times when you are making decisions about education, a topic you are NOT an expert in, you should be looking to those of us who ARE for guidance. We DO know what schools need. We DO know what our children need. We DO see the big picture, and what all of the cuts to our education system are doing to our children and to the future.
How can you, as a representative of our state, be proud of the job you are doing when NC constantly comes up at the bottom of the barrel? We are currently 46th in teacher pay. How do you expect to lure in the best and brightest teachers, or to keep them? They will go where they are valued, where education is valued, where they feel they can do the best for themselves in a place where they matter. It's been made more than clear that educators, and education itself, are not valued in the great state of North Carolina. And we are 49th in student spending? You should be ashamed of yourself! If you're going to pay us so little that I (as a single mother who doesn't get any other form of support besides what I earn through my own blood, sweat, and tears) have to work a second job just to make ends meet, should be expected to buy my own paper, pencils, crayons, and other supplies that I need for my students? It's not fair! When my options are to pay my bills and feed my own children, or provide for my students, I have to choose my own children. It breaks my heart, however, knowing that my students go without on a day to day basis, and now they're going without at school because neither I, nor my school, can afford to provide for them.
Please be more conscientious of the decisions you make, and try listening to those of us who actually know about the educational system. Make better-informed decisions by listening to what your educators have to say.
Thank you for all you do,
"BiblioTechGal"
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