For the Love of Education

I apologize for the forthcoming rant:

To the people who; 1) refuse to vote for bond elections, 2) vote for health care and pocket books before education, 3) the people donating to politicians and not schools...

...Why? Seriously why?

Why are politics more important than education? Why should students suffer through poor facilities because it was good enough for you 20+ years? (Which by the way means they are worse now!) Why does it have to fall only on educators to do the educating? Do you realize I am using a print from when I was in high school in my classroom. (I hate to admit it but that means it is 20 years old people!)

Hey! I love, LOVE, my job! Even on the bad days, I love my job. What I don't love is what society is doing to my consumers, the students. No freshman should have to sit for a 5 hour test. Heck legally, everyone gets a 15 minute break per 4 hours of work, but not my students. "Oh, our kids don't compare academically to China." Duh! You are trying to compare them to private school students in a tracked education system with Tiger Moms. "Well, I can't afford more taxes!" Well then we can't afford to improve the future of our society, because we can sure raise the cost of everything under the sun, but not our budgets. While your education worked for you, my students are growing up in a global society and we can't afford global skills training. I'm not saying I should be able to take students to Africa for a Geography lesson, but we are struggling to have a school teaching students how to use technology because the technology is not readily available in our rooms. I know what you're thinking, "but Michelle, you have a computer lab. You're school has i-Pads." But my school does not have the capability to ubiquitously provide every student and teacher constant access. It is limited to specific teachers or rooms. We can't plug in that much without blowing a fuse. We don't have the bandwidth to put 1200 kids plus teachers on the internet, and it is not just a problem hear!

On the note of donations to politicians. When was the last time that money went to fix anything? NEVER! Hello people! Wake up. That is for campaigning. I am still trying to figure out which of the blessed politicians in office kept even a quarter of their campaign promises. Just to define campaigning; that is simple travel and speaking engagements to encourage votes. So your dollars to planes, hotels, food, signs, decorations, not improving or world. Instead, donate to classroom. Send it to your local school district, and designate it to something specific, your local debate team, buying new computers, fixing the plumbing, anything, but make your dollars count. They don't count in a campaign.

On a side note we might ought to just have our politicians rap some catchy campaign thing, play it on all the radio and TV stations and call it good. They would say the same thing and cost is all a lot less. Then maybe we can at least get a good laugh out of the politicians!