"I just can't handle the pressure..."

Does this sound familiar:

"I reached high school, where I could not handle the pressure.  I had suffered from minor school anxiety in middle school, but I did very well with the support of my parents and teachers.  And despite suffering from minor school anxiety, I still enjoyed going to school.  High school was a different story.  On my first day of high school, I walked in, froze at the entrance, and found myself in the counselor’s office. I  remember saying, 'I just can’t handle the pressure.'  This was the first day of school – we hadn’t even done anything yet.  All I had running through my mind was, 'Everything you do matters. How will I do on my SAT’s? What college am I going to? Do I have enough extracurriculars? What if I fail my final exams?' All through middle school I was reminded how scary, hard, and high-pressure/high-stakes high school was going to be, and it got to me.
Omitting the long, boring details, I ended up being diagnosed with severe school and separation anxiety. I was homeschooled for four months during my sophomore year, four years ago almost to the day: the very end of October, November, December, January, and February, and then slowly started attending one class a day until I was back in school fully around April/May. It was the absolute worst experience of my life and exposed me to the ugly side of 'schooling.' I remember sitting in the counselor’s office and having a school administrator say to me, 'I don’t get it. Why can’t you just go to school like everyone else?' I felt worthless, stupid, and I genuinely didn’t understand why I couldn’t go to school like everyone else. This experience destroyed my love of learning."

What the heck goes on in our country's middle and high schools that can make a child who formerly loved learning such a wreck? I have a guess or two...

The above quote is from this interview in a Delaware education blog called,
Exceptional Deleware: Helping Parents of Special Needs Children, Eliminating Disability Discrimination, & Understanding Special Education Rights.  The post reports, "College student, Melissa Katz, currently studying to be a teacher, is a public education activist, and writes a blog of her own. It is brave to be planning a career in education at this time. I am not sure I would allow my kids to do so, which is quite sad to me. I have already told my youngest daughter that if she wants to be a teacher, she needs a second degree as a fall back. That said, if the next generation of young adults is like Melissa Katz, perhaps we have a chance at saving this important American institution.

Remember when Hollywood featured films about inspiring teachers?

 As a teacher in a wonderful school district (but one that is still impacted by these politically charged, anti-public education times), the following comment by Ms. Katz is what helps motivate me to "teach right":

"... during my junior and senior year of high school, I had one of the most unconventional yet enlightening teachers I’ve ever had, who has acted as a mentor to me throughout this entire journey. As my politics teacher, we would exchange news articles, and we began to exchange articles regarding the common core. From there, I became intrigued, and started doing my own independent research around the topic of education reform under the guidance of my mentor teacher. I once again discovered my love of learning. It really has been an incredible learning experience up to this point, and supplements a lot of the 'real world' exposure that I don’t get in the lecture hall, which will only prepare me more for the realities of being a teacher in this educational climate."

This speaks to me: " ... I had one of the most unconventional yet enlightening teachers I’ve ever had, who has acted as a mentor to me throughout this entire journey." I want my own children to have teachers like this. I want to be a teacher like this. Why else would anyone go into the education field? I don't want "common" anything for my kids, and I don't want to be common myself. 

It is the individual gifts that each teacher, instructional assistant, principal, and assistant principal brings to the school that are true goldmines of any school. Standardization slowly and painfully sucks the life out of the living, breathing humans, the very ones who bring passion into our schools and our world: the students and the teachers. 

I received an email over the weekend from a former student. I get these every so often, and they are my kind of "merit pay." They make me know that what I am doing makes a difference, and remind me why I love being a teacher. This student remembered a small token I gave him when his grandfather died years ago. He shared how much it meant to him and how it helped him through that time. He shared that he has a friend going through a difficult time, and wondered if I could tell him where I bought the token. He wrote me at 3 a.m. I was so moved. On top of the great literature, current event discussions, and writing assignments, this student remembered (years later) that his 8th grade English teacher cared. 

Ms. Katz wants more citizens to understand what is being done to teachers to purposely burn them out, distract them from focusing on our kids with meaningless paperwork and meetings, evaluate them by the junk science of using student test scores as a percentage of their effectiveness (which has been debunked by the American Statistical Association). She wants people to care enough to speak out - even if this doesn't impact one's own kids. She states, "We must, must, must move beyond the idea that “if it doesn’t directly affect my kid, I don’t care.” This fight against common core, the abuse of high-stakes standardized testing, etc. is about the future of public education. It is crucial that we all take the responsibility to look beyond the bubble of just ourselves and our schools and look at our neighbors and the schools down the street and the urban district a few towns over and the suburban town one more over and the rural district another few towns over – this impacts all of us in different ways, so putting ourselves in others’ shoes and recognizing this is bigger than the individual is an important first step."

If you or someone you know has grown kids or kids in private schools, you & they can be some of the strongest allies we have. Please speak up and urge others to do the same. All kids deserve teachers who are free to bring their strengths to the table, like Katz's unconventional and enlightening high school teacher.

No students or teachers should be having breakdowns from the way our schools are run. Our dedicated school board members need to focus on the very real issues that are impacting the children in our schools, and the teachers one the front lines with them. School leaders, from the superintendent to building principals have the power to set the tone and encourage real creativity and the unconventional. It is time for every citizen to make up his or her own mind about the future schools of our grandchildren and great grandchildren. Like our fingerprints, we are all unique, and no matter how much our politicians and the business people who buy their loyalty want us to believe otherwise, human beings cannot and should not be standardized. We are unique and our schools need an uncommon core that is locally developed and approved. No one ever aspired to be common in our great country... indeed being common is not at all what makes us American, now is it?