I received an email that alerted me I could see Freedom Writers, because I am a teacher, free (well, only between now and February 1). It didn’t say what I should use as identification. I suppose I could show my school ID or schlep my stacks of ungraded papers or produce a photo of my dining room table where I’m working on National Boards. (Truly, it looks like Office Depot threw up on it. Note to other teachers: If you’re going to pursue certification, buy a long table.)
Several of my students have seen the movie and shared how much they enjoyed it. In fact, three of my classes voted to read it as their next class book. But here’s the sad, frustrating irony. They may not all be able to afford to purchase the book about the life-changing events that transpired in the lives of kids like some of themselves. I’m still working out the kinks on that challenge.
I have the utmost respect for Erin Gruwell, for what she accomplished and is accomplishing still. I am, as a classroom teacher, glad that her story is bringing attention to her students, their successes, and the torches they continue to carry in establishing Freedom Writers Foundation. Teachers like Erin Gruwell are not, though, as rare as the public may think. Also not rare are the “unteachables,” and they can be students of every color and income.
What frightens me is that education is losing the Erin Gruwells and the potential Erins. Erin was 24 years old when she stepped into that classroom. She is now president of Freedom Writers Foundation and no longer a teacher.
Education isn’t losing its best and brightest; it may have already lost them. None of my own children majored in education. They lived through paper grading marathons, parent phone calls, chaperoning, club sponsoring, curriculum planning, school board antics, more paper grading. When people would talk to them about their mom having summers “off,” they’d laugh. They watched me boomerang from one meeting to another planning for the next school year, helping teachers new to the school, attending mandated inservices.
And then there’s discipline. I’ll side with Harry Wong in that many discipline problems are the result of kids not knowing a teacher’s policy and procedures. But too many are the result of parents not knowing their own policies and procedures. The number of parents who continue to stand between their children and consequences is frightening. You know, it doesn’t frighten me so much that some of the kids I teach will be the leaders of tomorrow. What disturbs me is that I’ll be sitting in a plane one day, and, out the window, I’ll see one of my former students. The one who was tardy, who rarely handed in homework, who never had a pen, and who thought turning in an assignment that looked like a four-year-old chewed half of it and wrote the other half was sufficient. Now that terrifies me.
I have eighteen years of classroom experience. I earn less , substantially less, than my twenty-six year old daughter who has been a paralegal for five years, and not much more than my daughter who graduated from college a year ago. And, yes, I have all those holidays “off” and am out of school June 1 and start the middle of August. For what we’re paid, I figure that’s compensation.
In less than ten years, I plan to retire, write full time, and giggle with my grandchildren. But who’s going to teach them?
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