I have spent the past several days letting you into my work world and telling you what I see as a teacher in a public school. I felt that I needed to post those post because my Facebook timeline was filled with post full of hate toward the public school system, its teachers, students and parents. I could not believe some of the post people were posting. I try not to take post against public education personally, but sometimes it is really hard.
As a public school teacher I know that public school is not for everyone. I tell friends all of the time you have to do what is best for each individual child. Your student may do better in a private or home-school situation. However, that does not mean that every public school in America should be closed. Kids thrive in different types of environments and it is important that parents figure out what is best for their individual children. So lets not knock one form of education because it did not work for you or your kids.
One of the hardest things I ever did as a public school teacher was to put my son in a private school. He was not doing well in our local public school, so we made the decision to move him to a private school. From second grade until the end of sixth grade he was in a private Christian school. At the start of 7th grade we moved him back to the public school setting. He needed the smaller classes and firmer structure offered by the private school during his early school years. However, once he hit middle school we found that his classes and options were being limited because the private school could not offer him everything that the public school could offer. I believe that moving him back to the public school was the best thing we could have done for him at that time. He had more opportunity for honors and AP classes in the public school. He scored above state and national averages on both his SAT and ACT test. Right now Madilyn is in public school. I have no idea if that is where she will stay or if we will look at other options. We will monitor progress and make a decision based on her learning style and situation.
Education is not a one size fits all. So parents who promote different types of educational environments need to not put down one over the other. What works for your kids may not work for my kids. It is also important that we remember that not every public school teaches the exact same thing. So when you go on a rant about teaching of “XYZ” in all the classrooms, you may be wrong. In your rants say our “county schools are teaching XYZ and I disagree with this.”
Rants:
- For every 1 teacher that abuses a child in the classroom there are thousands that do not.
- For every 1 teacher that has an inappropriate relationship with a student there are thousands that do not.
- For every bad or misdirected lesson taught in the classrooms across our nation there are thousands upon thousands of great lessons taught.
- For every bad kid there are hundreds or thousands of good kids.
- For those of you who are Christian, don’t forget some people are “called” to be teachers. We are in the public schools for a reason. So quit telling me to quit my job and move to a private school or to home-school my own children.
- For those of you who are Christian, really seek God when deciding how your student will be educated. You may be called to home school, or called to private school, or God may even want your kids in the public school system.
A lot of factors go into play with the success or failure of students in any school situation. As parents it is our job to really seek out what is best for our kids. So lets stop the smack talk and let parents make their own decisions and quit trying to make each other feel guilty about the educational decisions that they make for their children.