Crisis in the classroom
Teaching is too precious to squander having to be a deliverer of someone else’s expectations followed by tests to see if students have learned them. Teaching is personal, engaging, sharing, inviting, listening, modeling, caring. Teachers don’t fill minds, they open them. They don’t indoctrinate, they educate.
Teacher and students need to be free, free from constraints on personal decision making. The myriad of requirements placed on teachers make that freedom nearly impossible. Requirements from school authorities, school boards, and state and federal agencies restrict teacher and students. Teachers are pressured to transmit rather than to offer, deliver rather than engage, cover rather than open up. Classrooms must be places where teacher and students are free to speak up, offer their thoughts, and do it together in support of democracy.
