I do not teach in a poor school, nor do I teach in an affluent one. I teach in your middle of America school, where we have our constraints but do not have to spend our entire paycheck buying classroom supplies. I am lucky in some respects, yet sheltered in others, so I wonder whether I can truly form an opinion on movies like “Waiting for Superman.”. Can I judge what this movie portrays when I have not taught in a fail factory or been labeled a bad teacher?
What I can respond to though are statements such as the one at the end of the movie, “Our system is broken…and it feels impossible to fix.”. Statements such as this does nothing to fix the problem but perpetuates the pervasiveness of just how horrible the American school system is. This angers me. The entire American school system is not horrible, there are entities of it that are, and yes, those entities need to be fixed but is throwing out the entire system really the way to do it?
The preferred method of fixing anything in education seems to be to throw it all out and start over. You see it in school districts all over; desperate to fix falling scores or inadequate growth, money becomes the solution. Buy a new program! Buy a new test! More training! More supervision! More, more, more! It appears we are choking ourselves to mediocrity and then wondering who is to blame for the lack of oxygen?
So my plea is simple; enough with the reform! We have been reformed to death these last many years. Stop changing the strategies, stop changing the methods on how to test us and just let us teach. Let me teach. Give me time to reach a deeper level with my students. Give me time to let them create and explore. Give me time to differentiate for all of my students and not just the easy ones. Give me time to speak, to listen and to develop. Some may say that time is all teachers ever have been given. Not true; our time to learn with our students has been taken away minute by minute by new curriculum implementation, standards, tests and more guidelines. So before you tell me to change again, give me time to learn how to teach this way. Then I can become a better teacher and prove to you that our system is not impossible to fix, just give me time to teach.
Pernille Ripp 
After spending 10 years in a school that was "Waiting for Superman," I left because the system was broken…and it felt impossible to fix.Watching the movie brought back many memories of my old school, and lead to probably the only supportive post about the movie by a teacher. The things I experienced there are simply unimaginable in my current system just a couple towns away. It took me 5 1/2 years before I could go to bed and fall asleep.It is hard to imagine, but the system in those schools is broken.
Thank you for sharing that comment Paul, that is exactly why idid not feel I was in apposition to actively criticize the entire movie. I do not teach in a school or district like the ones portrayed and think it is a travesty that they exist. And so I wonder if there is a way to fix them at all. Can they be saved?
"The system" isn't something abstract or distant or beyond our reach. "The system" includes educators, students, and families. As soon as we label "the system" as "broken" and "impossible to fix," then we're making that statement about educators and those we serve. Are people "broken?" Yes, we are, but not in the sense that is mentioned by those critical of public education. The fact is, we can either choose to believe in the potential of people, or we can choose to give up on people. Improving opportunities for all isn't rocket science. We, collectively as citizens, can step up and provide for the benefit of all … or, we can continue to demonstrate the selfishness we've come to be infamous for. I'm stepping off my soap box … for now.
@Lauralmoore on TwitterAs a teacher currently in a failing school in Corrective Action III (or whatever comes after that…we have lost count) this movie disgusts me. It makes it appear as though teachers in these struggling districts do nothing to help their students, don't care about them or their futures and fail their students altogether. Research shows that over 60% of academic performance is influenced by non-school factors – things teachers and school districts cannot control. If the system is broken how do we fix it? Certainly we can be like a charter school and choose our students. That would certainly boost test scores – the heck with the ones that didn't get picked., they aren't out problem. We feed these children breakfast, lunch, and a snack… We have spare clothing for them when it was their "brothers turn to wear the socks today." Short of turning my classroom into a boarding school I cannot shield them from the outside world, nor can I emphasize and stress the value of education at home. One of my kids didn't do their homework this week because they were busy making tacos for dinner and taking care of their two younger siblings (my students are 6). Perhaps it is not the educational system that is broken, but the system of family values and educational values stemming from the home.
Thank you both Tom and Laura for saying what I failed to say. I reject the notion of an entire system being broken because there are always great teachers working in it, working against it. I knew this movie would be biased but was even surprised at just how biased it was, it used every trick in the book to get it's message across how these Charter schools a the only answer, what a joke. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, please keep them coming.
The title of this post resonated with me;I need time to teach!! My school is in 3rd year AYP and I have lost literally months of teaching time due to district mandated testing (20 lost sessions of teaching math alone due to standarized testing). We are implementing "interventions" that I feel are nothing less than morally unjust… looking at data and color coding students as Red, Yellow, Green and being told to focus on the Yellow students for the next 8 weeks until our State Test…. desperate measures to say the least. I could go on and on, but the only way I can go back each day is to put on my "colorblind" glasses and keep teaching ALL my students within the broken system of NCLB.