I Teach At Walmart
Editor’s Note: Susan Kay Anderson wrote the following op-ed after attending a recent “Town Hall” meeting at Keaau High School that was for teachers and the Hawaii State Teachers Association to brainstorm what needs to change in Hawaii.
I want to write about the teachers, about their suicidal faces, their blank, disappointed looks. The rushed way they cross the campus like life is somewhere else and they are not really there. I heard shared by other teachers that kindergarteners are asked to fill in bubble sheets to rate their teachers. I asked if they even know how to read yet. Of course not.
There is something always wrong with teachers, with every little thing they do as they become another piece of data in the endless private corporatization of education. They have realized they actually work at Walmart and not at a school. Their education, training, and experience are not of value. What matters most is that they are cheap and stay cheap as constant failures (except for a few exceptions who are on leadership teams).
There is desperation in their faces. One teacher said that she drives to work quitting in her mind each day.
Teachers at my school were recently evaluated using the Danielson Rubric Tool. They received 鈥淏asic鈥 almost across the board and 鈥淧roficient鈥 in perhaps one category. The administrators are not academics, but managers. There is no intellectual curiosity or interest in core subjects and arts, languages, accelerated programs, librarians and their budgets have been slashed and/or thrown into the trash.
This could be the reason teachers stumble around like they鈥檙e in a hurry to a destination unknown to them as they close their eyes and blink and blink again, wondering if this is at all true and what else will be 鈥減ut into place鈥 to further take away any shred of academic freedom left as they stand there, naked, proven inadequate again, needing 鈥渇ixing鈥 some more 鈥 this year yet something else is wrong with their performances, student test scores, and the need for more and more data. To pair with a union advocate and file grievances is akin to writing a master鈥檚 thesis. Take this on year after year and a teacher becomes burnt out, indeed.
Leave teachers alone. Spend money on our broken economies, families, and basic human needs. It is cheaper to focus on teachers and determining if they are they “good” or if are they “bad” than spend that money into repairing damaged ecosystems, and job creation, affordable health care, and solutions to chronic poverty. There needs to be conversations about these and not whether teachers failed yet again.
There is more than one way to teach, more than one way to learn. I propose: No Academic Freedom Left Behind!
About the author: Susan Kay Anderson has worked as an archeologist, barista, book store clerk, farm hand, and septic tank service company as a receptionist, among other endeavors. Her writing can be found in: Eleventh Muse, Rain Bird, Square One, Timothy McSweeney鈥檚 Internet Tendency, and on Tom Clark鈥檚 website (comments). She has been an educator in Hawaii since 1995. She blogs at .
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