Greg Abbott is Making Teachers Miserable- Teachers are Saying “I QUIT”!
In the past few months, we have seen too much violence, long lines at the gas pump, and bare shelves at the grocery stores as we were paying higher prices for everything we need, all because of the political mess others have caused. This brings me to another prominent topic of how we’re losing teachers and not seeing any new college students in line to replace those we lost.
It is time to address why we’re losing teachers who have taught for many years and some who just started in the last five years. In Texas, the Texas Educational Agency has received more complaints about teachers this year. These complaints end up in the hands of the State Board of Education, which then reviews these complaints and decides if the teacher will be put on a probationary period or revoke their license permanently. According to most ISD school calendars, if a teacher is given probation, it lasts one year but equals two school years. The worst punishment is when a teacher loses their license or certification because it’s taken them so much work and time to become a teacher. Yet, this week, I saw headlines that read “Teachers are saying I Quit” and walking away from their teaching careers.
As we look deeper into what’s happening in our classrooms, we can see that Texas has many new requirements for some of our teachers. One of those requirements is that teachers, including special education teachers and principals, must complete the HB 3 Reading Academics by the 2022-2023 school year. I would also like to note that these Reading Academics must be completed by teachers on their own time. Some teachers have stated that this class can take up to 60 hours to 120 hours to complete. In 2016 HB 2610 passed in the 84TH Texas Legislature, which removed the 180 days of class requirement by all schools, and they now have to operate for a bare minimum of 75,600 minutes per calendar school year. This means that our teachers must teach 420 minutes per day. This doesn’t include the time teachers provide tutoring before and after school, nor the many hours they spend on paperwork, meetings, and learning the new STAAR’S curriculum. Our teachers are overwhelmed as Texas Lawmakers are constantly adding or deleting the requirements that our teachers do every school year.
When reading over the complaints from this current school year, most are because Texas now has a law based on Critical Race Theory, making it much harder to teach history or any subject in the classrooms. Governor Greg Abbott created a list of books that our children cannot read. I believe that some of these books need to be looked at, but some of these books have been in our schools’ libraries for years. I remember when librarians would decide what was grade-appropriate and whether a book should or shouldn’t be allowed in our schools. We now must create committees to review our library books, and then those reviewing them can determine what our children can and can’t read. I, too, know that as parents, we are confronted with the more significant issue of our children not having a textbook to bring home so they can complete their homework. The combination of teachers not being able to teach the correct history and trying to find the right book has now caused our teachers to say, “We Quit, “and just walk out of our classrooms.
As Texas faces losing more teachers, we are seeing a new trend of some school districts moving to a four-day week that will allow teachers to have Fridays to complete any training or other work. Other districts are loosening the requirements needed to become a teacher; some districts allow “highly qualified” people to teach general education classes without becoming certified teachers. This year the Governor created a committee to find out how Texas could find new teachers and hire more bilingual teachers. Yet our Governor has forgotten how to help our current teachers working in the trenches today. Maybe he should remember the negative remarks that he and his fellow politicians made. These remarks caused our teachers an overwhelming amount of pain as some felt their careers were not meaningful to our society. I understand that the pandemic left many of us confused about how or what would be the most effective way to get our children their education. But at the end of the day, we must admit that our teachers pushed through this situation by creating a classroom within their homes so they could teach via Zoom.
We must also remember that teachers weren’t given a significant pay raise for using their homes and no one had a manual on how to teach via zoom. So maybe our Governor and LT. Governors shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss that teachers stepped up like soldiers during a war to give our children some way to receive an education. We must at least remind those that this pandemic was not only bad for our health but mentally and emotionally; it left all our teachers, students, and families drained. So, I believe that our teachers should be entitled to extra pay, more free resources, and paid time off to complete all the requirements that our Texas lawmakers want them to achieve. If we want to keep our qualified teachers, we need to consider all we ask our teachers to do daily. The after-effects of these past two years of living in a pandemic have made some children less friendly and more reluctant to be in a classroom disrupting their education.
We must find a way to address these issues so that we can help them return to being a better student. If we can’t figure out what to do to keep teachers or how to encourage more graduating seniors to pursue a teaching career, then our society is doomed.
Parents, I understand that we’re still living in hard times, but we need to help find a solution that will benefit our children and everyone working in our schools. We must never forget that all our children will play a role in our futures and may someday run our entire state or nation. It’s our responsibility to ensure that our next generation is fully prepared to lead us no matter the circumstances.
Lastly, if anyone has any questions, concerns, or comments, please email me at lena.lopez@saobserver.com.
