The price I have paid for speaking out for kids and teachers (rough draft)

Dear W.C. Gentry

Since you mentioned it in the Times Union I thought I would tell you the price I have paid for speaking out.

In 2006 I returned to teaching after taking one year off to care for my ailing mother.

In 2007 I received the Map bonus. I was excited so I told Bob Hurner who is not just the best teacher I have ever met but a great man, and he didn’t get it, I felt terrible. I told several other teachers who also didn’t get it, teachers I looked up to. I was finally pulled aside and told it was wrong to tell people. Here I was proud and happy and yet I had to keep it a secret from my colleagues, especially from the teachers I knew deserved it more than me, and I consider myself a pretty good teacher.

The art teacher had published some meandering rant in the Folio and as an amateur writer I thought I would write this up too. They printed it and teachers from all across the district contacted me and thanked me for writing it and so I found other topics to write about.

Back then I usually only wrote about how magnet schools were unfair (I was on first coast connect discussing the topic) and about how special ed kids really had it bad but the more I wrote the more teachers asked me to write.

That year I went from high performing to needs improvement. They took away my class and I was a traveling teacher with a self-contained classroom. That’s right me and 8 severely disabled kids would switch classes. Probably the only time in the history of education that happened.

The next year I was switched to teaching science for more moderately disabled (V.E.) kids. I was told it was because I had an amiable style and as soon as they hired a replacement for the science teacher, they would send me back to TMH. I taught science for the next three years despite the fact they hired 5 new TMH teachers, despite the fact I asked the union to intervene for me, despite the fact I wrote letters to everybody who would listen and despite the fact I had no business teaching science.

My last year there I was the only traveling teacher. My second period class met in six different rooms, including the band room. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just me but them messing with my kids was unacceptable. I didn’t have a place for my stuff, which often disappeared. They took all my books one day and when I asked about it they said they would get back to me but never did. It was a miserable year.

Then two days before this year began I was surplussed, they told me it was based on some data on Pearson but couldn’t be more exact. I later found out it was based on how 9 kids did in four classes I co-taught, which since I was reduced to being nothing but a glorified para is a pretty liberal description of what I did.

For 5 years now the district has messed with me and now you are talking about the things I have been writing about, a lack of rigor, a lack of discipline and shoddy treatment of teachers.

Mr. Gentry I don’t think you are a bad guy but while you have been dragging your feet men and women who dedicated their lives to children have paid the price and children have been getting a substandard education.

You have a few months left; I hope you make the best of them.