By Sammy Ginsberg
How many times can you hear
“Teaching didn’t used to be like this,
we used to eat lunch together,
we used to go out dancing on Fridays after a hard week,
we used to have retreats,”
before you are so heavy, disappointed, betrayed
there is no hope
Why did these go away?
Who let them disappear?
These basic events that make us human,
making work meaningful - gone.
Where your mentors vent at you
and tell you, “This is teaching,”
your admin shrug at your problems,
suggest anxiety pills,
your school acknowledges
a student died by suicide and changes nothing,
no faculty meeting, no more mentions,
just a poster in the yearbook.
your fellow new teachers share stories
worse than your own
your newspaper posts articles about
the AP on trial for using the n-word with a hard R
the Basketball coach who lied about covid tests prices and took 20%
the teacher fired for not wanting to ban a song about rainbows in their first grade class
the removal of affirmative action
but no one talks about next steps,
just emails and social media asking for donations
no in person spaces to get together and grieve
Where is there to go?
when your family suggest teachers have guns
to protect you from school shootings,
your boyfriend tells you that you are too negative
that his life is hard, too
your friends tell you to quit, that there life is hard too
This is teaching?!?!
When Why Be A Teacher Talk
speaker said,
“If you care, you should be a teacher
If you hated school, you should be a teacher”
I felt called, my eyes filled with tears,
my body tingled.
Well here I am!
I still love learning, and I still hate school.
A factory squeezing the life force out,
I am becoming a person I hate to be around
stuck in anger.
stuck in isolation.
stuck in survival mode.
there is no hope
but where do you go?
I can’t abandon the children!
And leave the future to who?
Too many teachers have gotten there, the bottom
leaving -
there is no hope
others fired -
for having professional judgments.
This is not teaching,
this is a battleground
Please help.
Please still love me.
Please let’s dream of a new future,
a vision so we can hope and work towards together.
I’m not naive, I just have at least 30 more years
of working before I might be able to retire,
and the way it is, I can’t live.
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