Letter to the Editor: The whole world is watching, but nobody cares

Dear Editor,

In the 2022/2023 school year, my classroom assignment was to teach Kindergarten and 1st grade self-contained special education.  Self-contained meaning there are no mainstream kids in the class.  It’s only special ed kids.  This class, the previous year, struggled.  That would be putting it mildly.  It was organized chaos, the stereotypical inner city special ed class.  Many of the students spent more time at the security desk than they did in the classroom.

Last year was the exact opposite. I went into the class, established order, established structure and accountability, and everyone thrived.  The person who thrived most of all was me.  I thrived because of the students.  I set up a system, but systems are set up every day, they fail every day.  A system is only as good as the people using it.  I set up a system and the kids learned.  Reading and math scores went up across the board.  Kids were happy and their parents were happy.  The students didn’t thrive because of me, they thrived because of themselves.  Because of their parents.  I didn’t give them anything, it was already there.  I didn’t put intelligence or brain power into them.  I didn’t put empathy and kindness into them.  I didn’t put the will to learn and be successful into them.  All of that was already there.  I merely provided them an environment that allowed all of that to come out.

Two of the kids, who had struggled greatly the previous year, were moved out of self-contained and into a co-taught class for this school year.  That was a miracle that rarely, if ever, happens.  I was a great teacher, they were great students.  It’s taken me my entire life to be able to say that about myself, but I was.  It was the most fulfilling year of my life.  I accomplished this with administrators breathing down my neck and other teachers looking to sabotage me.  I was reported to administration, by a fellow teacher, in September.  The nonsense…