Stop the Tear Downs

Education and particularly teachers are under a harsh lens right now.  Everywhere you turn headlines scream out new nasty discoveries about bad teachers, horrible programs, and how schools are failing.  As a teacher, it is hard to not drown in all the negativity.  Yet as most of the teachers I have encountered, we choose not to drown, and instead we focus on our students, on our lives and continue to do what we do beast; teach, knowing that this too will end and at some point sanity must be introduced back into the conversation, right?

Yet as the rhetoric gets more cutthroat and the divide grows, this mentality of us versus them has formed and cemented itself into too many educational debates.  No longer are teachers united, rather it becomes veterans versus new, tech users vs non-tech users, always a split, always two sides, never just one united front.  And we teachers buy into it as well.  If one teacher is heralded for doing something good, other teachers get upset because then they must be doing something wrong.  If a school is highlighted as working well, then other schools within the district must be performing poorly.  Rather than view success of one as success for all, it becomes just that; success for one and failure for everyone else.

This epidemic of negativity must stop.  We are tearing each other apart, trying to climb to the top, vying for the same spotlight.  But that is not what teaching is about, we teach our students that we are only as strong as the weakest performance, and that we must celebrate everyone.  And yet, somewhere that message is lost.  The public may want us split, because then it is easier to create “reform” and yet now is the time we must band together.  We must relearn to celebrate successes and not be afraid to share them.  It is time for people to speak up when something incredible happens in their classroom or in their school, and it is time for everyone else to celebrate it, not tear it down.  This isn’t me versus you, it’s all of us together.