Today was a state liquor day. Teachers know what I mean. The kids don’t listen to directions, talk incessantly to themselves and each other, making sounds they heard on a cartoon they watch.

It gets to be annoying how we’re supposed to follow every educational theorist’s convoluted ideas of how to educate students. I remember a time that you controlled the ship that was your classroom. You handled discipline, taught the students, and they would either get in line in your classroom or you sent them to the principal’s office to be given a consequence for acting up.

Now, the students are the only ones happy and they have the parents eating out of their hands and teachers are scrambling to meet both parent’s and administration’s expectations. How strange. The inmates are running the prison and we’re allowing it and if anything, we’re starting to see this as “normal.”

Sorry, I refuse to get Stockholm Syndrome for doing my job as a teachers. Student excuses are like mouths–everyone has one, so no one is special; anymore. I see what needs to be done, but it can’t be done as long as the Department of Education allows schools to be run as businesses. They are so mesmerized by their data that they can’t see just how far off course we’ve become. We’re like the boat that is listing in the storm, ever closer to the reef that will sink us.

Don’t even get me started on teacher evaluations. They are a way to make teachers paranoid and to see if they can locate the problem teachers that need to get the boot. The problem is, I’ve only have ever seen 2 teachers that needed to be let go because of their sheer incompetence and I’ve been teaching for over 30 years! I always feel paranoid when administration wants to come in to my room to observe me. They are very subjective in their observations/evaluations and if the wind blows the wrong way, you get dinged on every little thing. Very rarely are their positives that they notice and want to complement you on. Well, at least this has been my experience with these so-called evaluations.

I miss the days of simple district evaluations, no state testing, achievement tests given to see how much students have learned, separating the low level students from the average to high achieving students, and actual parents and students with skin in the game because of consequences that stick.

Hopefully, the pendulum will swing back towards common sense, but I’m not holding my breath!