Issue 1

Most opinion pieces or blogs contain highly emotive words, hooks, quotable phrases that leave a reader feeling seen or experiences confirmed. This piece isn’t seeking to do that because teachers all know their experiences are real and feelings valid. We send around viral articles and memes on a regular basis confirming each other’s lived moments of frustration. What we need is to take real steps toward each other, not online, that improve our conditions. We need the public to support us and know the truth of our lives. Teacher Chronicles seeks to achieve this.

In today’s educational climate teachers are under attack. At the beginning of the pandemic, we were their heroes. Parents saw our effort, our fortitude, our creativity in real time in ways they never had before. They commended us and politicians lifted us up publicly. Then, they all decided it was too much and declared the pandemic over while thousands still died daily. When we cared about our safety and asked to be considered in this madness, we were called selfish. We were told we’d chosen this path, so we needed to put up or shut up. Every day we already put our lives on the line with no one seeming to care as we watch school shootings occur with such regularity it barely makes the news anymore. Yet, somehow, the public demanded more. Teachers and students began dying from Covid and yet, we trudged on. We watched helplessly as our coworkers and students lost loved ones to this virus and yet somehow a random book, algorithm, and obscure history date was supposed to be prioritized. We were expected to recreate overnight how to educate students without any training or research-based strategies, yet success was demanded. We were evaluated and judged as if somehow life was normal when it simply wasn’t.

Teachers have left the field in droves since this onslaught by the public. Those of us who stayed are now in year two of this torturous environment. For teachers in Florida, where the governor has effectively declared the pandemic over, life has simply become worse. Student and teacher absences are alarmingly high, there are school and bus driver staff shortages, and substitutes are nowhere to be found. The state has declared we now must be evaluated even more than the year prior where they “kindly” didn’t evaluate us on only a handful less items than the usual twenty plus. We and our students are dropping like flies due to Covid infections. Yet, we trudge on. Teachers are exhausted, sick, drained, frustrated, and feeling used and abused. Yet, we trudge on. Parents demand perfec-

tion, yelling at us and administration without relief. The district caters to their demands, changes policy to meet their needs, and now the state says they should be allowed to sue us if we do not teach how they like. Yet, we trudge on.

But many of us won’t. Many of us will seek new careers and leave this field. Public education will lose good teachers as long as this is allowed to continue. Students will inevitably loose as they are shoved into cafeterias and gyms to await a new “teacher”. In Florida, this can be anyone with a degree (not education) and no teaching certificate. This means, students are not being taught by experts in many cases but rather people who simply enjoy the idea of teaching. Somehow, this is acceptable to the general public who we all know would not want a surgery performed by someone trained on YouTube and is passionate about medical knowledge but had no training whatsoever. Why then do we allow this for educating our students? Is this not the very foundation of their lives, of our democracy, of our economy? Perhaps, this is also why we are treated so poorly.

When the state and school districts know they are not hiring experts, they know they cannot trust us as experts or have to treat us as experts, which means we also do not get paid as experts. Can great teachers come from this path? Of course! This is in no way to discount those who have taken this path, but rather to point out this is used too often to put a body in a classroom. Our superintendent in Osceola School District said it herself that teachers had to work so parents could. This, intentional or not, powerfully said the quiet part out loud. We are nothing but babysitters. That’s how we’re viewed, that’s how we’re treated, and that is how we are paid. And, that is why we are sacrificed.

As teachers, we all know this is true. We vent in our teacher circles and on social media. But we DO NOTHING. We have more power than they want us to believe we have. We have a union that cannot do much without more involvement from teachers. That is step one. Join the union. We can work to our contract and demonstrate our value. You cannot be fired for doing your job, but they will see how much would not get done if we were not such martyrs to this lifestyle. That is step two. Finally, we demand the change we know we deserve, and our students deserve. That is step three.

Follow the Teacher Chronicles for relatable stories, uplifting tales of our impact, methods for change, educational issues facing students and teachers occurring under our noses. If you have a “day in the life” of tale you want to share with the public anonymously, please contact this writer at teacherchroniclesarticles@gmail.com and I assure your story will be shared without your name attached. We need to unite. We are stronger together. We can be the change we want to see.