Complaint Review: Teaching/Education - Roxboro North Carolina

As a fellow disgruntled teacher, I couldn't help but offer my own take on the sorry state of the US public school system. Or rather, I couldn't agree with these posts more. I spent 5 long years in a top-notch university just to recieve my teaching certification in Art, K-12. Countless hours of studying, student-teaching, and working my butt off to stay on the Dean's List, and I was immediately thrown into the Nashville Metro Public School system with stars in my eyes, ready to teach students asthetics and an appreciation of art that had led to my wanting to teach it one day. As soon as I was employed as an art teacher, I soon realized how sorry the state of education itself truly is---not ONLY did I have to spend hundreds of dollars of my own money to take required tests for certification, but I spent just as much of my own money keeping my room filled with art supplies. As for the required state art curriculum I had to teach? What a joke...I either was not provided with proper supplies for such lessons, or I was given ridiculous lessons to teach that were simply too frivolous or involved for the types of students I was dealing with at these particular inner-city schools. Also, universities should be required to teach prospective teachers courses in child-discipline and classroom management. Sticking one young female teacher into a classroom of over 25 hyperactive project kids is a difficulty in itself---I spent more time trying to keep these kids quiet and breaking apart fights than actually teaching art, for instance. I only wish I had been given ample preparation for just such a scenario, as I felt completely overwhelmed and undertrained for what I had to deal with behavior-wise within my art room. But of course, it was ALWAYS my fault, no matter what---zero support from my superiors, only blame. And that brings me next to the staff and other adults determined to make your Hellish professional existence all the more Hellish. When you're not dealing with a typically pushy, headstrong, non-supportive, tyrant principal who has the power to decide whether or not your teaching career will continue, you have sad excuses of parents either on or off your butt. After two years of dealing with this insanity, the principal of my second school decided to kill my art teaching career single-handedly. All the work and money I'd put into my teaching career, and just because she didn't like me and I didn't teach to HER preference and received no help or support from her, I received a "Not for Rehire" on one of my many job-reviews((yes, teachers get graded constantly themselves---what irony!)) and was thus deemed unable to qualify or even interview with another school in the system. To add insult to my injuries, I was black-balled in my profession! If I even attempt to interview in other systems, I have that black mark on my record. To say I'm bitter and feel attacked by this particular school system would be an understatement. As I am strictly qualified for this specific profession, I've had to simply substitute teach in the meantime---I'm making less than half of what I was making during my art teaching days. In conclusion, I hope my own bitter experience can shed light on just how difficult the teaching profession truly is, especially within Metro Nashville's public school system. You can be swarmed with negativity and be in over your head the minute you step into a seemingly harmless school, and if you dare stand up for yourself and not see eye-to-eye with a principal, you can be black-balled from teaching again for good. School systems that whine about the lack of teachers should explore the actual how's and why's of this "need", as I'm living proof that they can screw over the finest teachers available in favor of these biased morons that are clogging up the teaching profession already.

I have been a teacher for many many years down here in Mississipi. I have striven to give the best schooling to all of my students, regardless of gender or religious preference. The 3 r's are stressed and restressed, and it makes all are jobs easier. When I teach you, you stay taught. Discipline is key: "spare the rods, spoiled is the children" hangs above my desk for all my students to comprehend. I know that it comes from the Bible and the Constitution stresses religion in our teaching, but I can't resist those words. Thank you and God bless all of you. You are doing the Lord's work when you help a teacher touch the lives of our most precocious resources. God bless you especially, Holly. Don't give up doing the Lord's work and get frustrated in your heart. Administraitors get frustrated too, and they need our prayers as much as me and you. They have there own concerns. I give you this quote "A Teacher is the fut__e of teaching. What's missing? U R!" Get it?

After reading numerous posts on this great site, it is obvious that there are serious issues with the educational system in these United States. Virtually all the posts have numerous grammar and/or spelling errors. I shudder to think what this country will become if this trend is not corrected. Using "there" instead of "their" and "right" instead of "write" is shameful. I read a rebuttal on one post titled "PEP BOYS Tired of Getting Ripped off by Mechanics". The person who wrote the rebuttal made fun of the poster's spelling. This individual should pay more attention to his own spelling and grammar as it is atrocious. Very funny reading indeed. Thank you for the opportunity to vent.