Teacher assaulted

Today at school, one of our teachers was hit by an enraged female student. The student was removed, but our administration was less than supportive of the teacher, choosing instead to berate her as if she'd done something wrong AND to tell her she had to go back to her classroom. One of the other teachers stepped in and covered her class because we all thought it was insane to force her to go back into the classroom after that.

I have submitted my resume to several places this week; hopefully there will be a place for me outside of Iowa public education. I have seen teacher after teacher after teacher get the sorry end of the stick, and I'm not impressed. Iowa seems to pride itself on being so progressive and superior with regards to public education -- well I'm here to tell you that it ain't necessarily so. My experience has been that they have ridiculous credential requirements designed to rake more bucks into their colleges but which do little to actually further a person's education. There are people whose job is secure because they've been there forever, yet they have zero relationship with students and are completely ineffectual. There are administrators who still don't know what my name is even though this is my second year on staff, and who can't spell, can't compose a grammatically correct sentence, or pronounce students' names over the intercom. There are eminently wise and experienced teachers who are being shuffled around and treated as associates. The entire building is being run in the least efficient, most unjust, and most backwards way possible.

Normally I wouldn't care; as I've said before, I'm grateful to have a job. However, I'm less grateful than I once was, because I've seen that in order to KEEP the job, I have to plunge my family into debt to pay for more college credits.

I personally think I can make at least the same $$, if not more, without having to fork over wads of money I don't have to a college which doesn't really teach me anything new or useful.

And it's a dirty shame, because I believe that I am an effective teacher who's making an impact on the lives of some high school students because I dare to care about them.

See, in everything, it's always the kids who lose out, isn't it? They're the only ones without a voice or an advocate in this thing.