Many teachers have had their love of teaching eroded because of the emphasis on standardized testing. The teacher featured in this powerful video above, uses YouTube to resign from a profession she once loved.
I found this quote to be most compelling:
“Raising students’ test scores on standardized tests is now the only goal. And in order to achieve it, the creativity, flexibility and spontaneity that create authentic learning environments have been eliminated. Everything I loved about teaching is extinct.”
Click on the link to read Teachers Who Cheat are “as Dumb as Hell”
Click on the link to read Standardized Tests for Teachers!
Click on the link to read Oops, We Seem to Have Lost Your Exams
Click on the link to read I’m Just Gonna Say It: Standardised Tests Suck!
Click on the link to read Too Many Tests, Not Enough Teaching
Tags: Education, Standardized Testing, teacher resigns on youtube, Teacher Stress, Teacher Welfare, Video, YouTube
Topical Teaching 
May 26, 2013 at 3:06 pm |
What a completely sad day that a teacher as passionate as you resigns. This must have been one of the most difficult decisions you have ever had to make. I wish I could give you a big hug and tell you everything will be ok, but we both know I would be lying. Instead, I will commend you for your courage to stand up for your convictions and wish you the strength to transition to the next stage of your life.
May 26, 2013 at 9:38 pm |
“Even the unions…..” I have watched as unions have sold out teachers, achieving paltry salary increases in return for more of the kind of conditions spoken of in the video, as if salary increases are all teachers want. Teachers as a group have been made more and more accountable for things over which they have diminishing control. We hear the politicians…”We need better teachers…” Yes, and we need better doctors and better lawyers and better nurses and better janitors. But teachers are the only ones put under increasing scrutiny, being stripped of their creativity and thereby being made to pay for the complete hash produced by increasingly incompetent management, who think because they can manage a chook raffle they can manage a school system. Teachers of the world unite and regain your self respect and the dignity of your profession.
May 27, 2013 at 3:49 am |
Part of me is disappointed in her though. Someone with this much apparent conviction to her field that she would make a high-profile video for YouTube to point out all the flaws… decides to quit. I have seen and felt everything she points out, but I chose not to abandoned children, leaving them stranded in a broken system, when they’re needing people like us the most.
Instead, I found the best way through the red tape, around the faulty admins, and right to the heart of the students. I started a program that bypasses the system and speaks directly to character education, to social interaction, to building meaningful relationships with, and between, students and instructors.
It takes people like she says she is, and people like I know I am, to band together year after year, and become the majority. That can’t happen if people like us continue to give up, no matter how difficult it’s made for us. Giving up our seat lets it become filled by the inadequate, the inept and the damaging.
I’m holding my seat for as long as I’m allowed to. I’m not giving up or giving in… instead I’m going to keep on giving. The children deserve to be fought for, more than I require an easier path to that victory.