These Days

Budget cuts. Not enough points. Inadequate funding. These are all words that no teacher wishes to hear, and yet unfortunately they are all words that many teachers have grown too accustomed to hearing.

This wasn't always the case. I can remember a time not so long ago when if you wanted to become a teacher it was a welcomed decision and blessing. Teachers were needed and wanted. Now it feels as though there are too many of us and rather than learning from one another we're competing with one another for the job. Rather than working as a team for the sake of our children, it's who can find the job as close to when school starts as possible so you can have that full-year contract.

Believe me I know. I entered the teaching field four years ago, this coming fall will be my fifth. I have worked my way up and I still do not have a contract for this coming fall. I began as a kindergarten assistant in a private school for two years, stopped to student teach and then could never get back in. Teaching was at it's lowest. So I began subbing. I even long-term subbed, at the same school where I student taught. Nothing. In fact I don't know what the summers are like these days without job searching. Last summer I looked out of state (even though 5 years ago I moved back here to be home). This past October I was hired. Yes, we built it up as a good thing, there were overcrowded classes and now the class sizes would be smaller. By having me as another teacher there the students were benefitting. But was it really fair to them? Should they have had to go through that switch after nine weeks of school? Should they have had to have gotten used to a teacher to only have to relearn the ways of a new one? Should those teachers have had to have grown attached and developed a relationship with those students only to have to hand them over to a brand new teacher they didn't know? 


And now as the year comes to a close my students have had to adjust to the fact that their first-grade teacher they have grown so attached to will not be there in the fall to watch them flourish, to really see just how much they know! I have my students' best interests at heart, and I know my principal does too. Yet, somehow it gets lost beyond there and that just might be where the cuts need to be mended back together.

**if you would like to read more about this, please head over to Teaching Blog Addict to see what others are saying.