Really?

I've recently just discovered that the great state of Colorado is planning on cutting education funding once again.  I know everyone is so tired of hearing teachers complain about the problem, but sometimes I wonder who out there exactly is standing up for the people education our nation's youth? We are required to meet certain expectations and many of us go beyond the expectations laid out before us and pursue higher levels of mastery in our careers with Master's degree and professional development, so that we can offer our students the best.

What is so infuriating is that so many people fail to realize that our salaries are not covering the expenses required to be a licensed, highly qualified teacher.  Can someone explain this to me? The state wants our students to achieve more, they want their teachers to raise achievement levels, but they don't want to fund already underfunded schools. I'm confused. I'm baffled.  And if one more person tells me that I need to maintain a positive outlook and "do it for the kids," I will scream hysterically.  Why don't the administrators or the president take a pay cut or all of the polititcians who continue to raise their own salaries? Why don't they just work for "the sake of the country?"  It's exhausting and demoralizing and dishonoring to the hard work we've invested in our careers. 

My exhaustion from teaching will never come from dealing with students, it will come from the lack of respect our country places on the value of knowledge.

The Great Sticky Note Escape

It's embarrassing really...

I have no money left in my measly classroom budget this year to buy simple sticky notes.  And since I make well below the state median in pay, there is NO way I'm buying any supplies out of my own pocket.

So there I was in the teacher's lounge making copies for one of my classes and wondering what I was going to use for the active reading strategy I wanted to teach to my 7th grade Language Arts students that day.  Its a simple activity really.  The kids use the stickies to write questions or predictions they have in their mind as they read the story.  When something arises they can post it right in the book at the exact spot that triggered the question or thought.  It's a great easy way for me to check in on their interaction with the text they're reading and they love using the sticky notes. I guess I don't blame them.  I get a secret satisfaction out of finding something important to write on a sticky and placing it with authority on whatever folder or object has earned the Sticky Note Right.

But there they were staring me in the face.  A stack of little multicolored pastel stickies.  Damn those stickies.  It was awful.  Staring at me...taunting me really.  It was as if the little flaps were moving like mouths, telling me, "take me, stick me." The moral dilemma of it all disturbs me.  To take what didn't belong to me and make my day just a little easier or to walk proudly down the hall and spend 20 more minutes of my already dwindling planning time coming up with an alternative.  What to do? 

That's right...I took them and ran dammit.  I don't know if I was undetected or if our sweet school secretary just felt plain sorry for me, but I got away with it.  And for all of you out there who might be judging me, staring at this post with your jaws wide open, in awe, that I, a teacher of our impressionable youth of America, would steal, just to make my life easier...well I say to you...Judge AWAY.  I'm exhausted.  I have one planning period a day and four different classes to plan and grade for.  I'm glad I did it.  And as I've reflected on my actions, I realize it's the sad, pathetic, unrealistic, demands of our national and state educational systems that has left me to beg, borrow, and steal my way through the muddy trenches of another school year!