Resignation letter

Hey guys. I got my hands on a juicy resignation letter of a recently practicing teacher. I thought it would be useful to know of some of problems experienced by some of the teachers out there right now. I was going to chop it down but i decided not too as i didnt want to change the authour's message. So dont read it all just skim over it if your interested. Dont let it discourage you from being a teacher!

Dear Mr.

Most people think I took a leave of absence from my full time teaching position because of the kids. “There so many behaviour issues to deal with these days, isn’t there?” they’d say. Or my colleagues would commiserate, “It’s impossible to teach when kids are not prepared to work.” The truth, however, is that it is not the children driving me away from teaching. In fact, it was the kids that got me there in the first place and kept me there as long as I was. The real reason I’m giving up on the job is much bigger. It’s the system and the people who sustain it.

The BCTF policy-makers are constantly claiming they are only concerned about the children. However, they protect teachers who have lost their passion and desire to work with children. In an effort to be fair (even to those who may be less capable) their seniority-first system creates an unfair disadvantage to the young, enthusiastic teachers we need for our children. So while a disengaged, bitter teacher who is too lazy or afraid to quit the job he hates puts up another overhead page for the kids to copy, the fresh new graduate with energy to spare sits by the phone.

The BCTF strikes for money. Don’t even try to tell me “it’s about class size” and bla bla bla. I’ve worked with these people for years and in all private conversations it was about money. I could not find one single teacher who would ever agree with me when I said “then why don’t we ask for a pay cut and a small class size cap?” Instead, these people are willing to hold the public hostage until they get their way (or a slap on the wrist). Do they not realize that they are public servants? Do they not realize that their salaries are paid for from the taxes of waitresses, carpenters and McDonald’s workers? There is no big bad capitalist making money off the teachers’ labour. This isn’t a coal mine, people.

While it is unfortunate that the only recourse people can think of is striking, I understand why so many teachers feel overwhelmed with their jobs. The job has changed over the years and it’s getting more complicated all the time. More and more “necessary” activities are required by the School Board and the myriad of directors who try to keep them happy.
I’ve been to the Board Office. It’s a beautiful, quiet, carpeted place where lots of former classroom teachers go to “make a difference”. Really, this is the Accountability Centre of the District. The Board needs to be accountable to the public. The Directors need to be accountable to the Board. Therefore, the Directors need to have the teachers doing a whole lot of stuff.

If the voters/parents are concerned about literacy and numeracy, we need to show them that we’re working to improve in those areas. We could start several projects. It doesn’t matter if these projects might not be useful or implemented properly, as long as we can say we’re implementing something. If it looks good on paper it’s working. How accountable!

I’ve seen this first hand. After eating a tasty snack paid for by the taxpayers, we sat in the board room while taxpayer provided TOCs took care of our classes. We were there to discuss how well the implementation of middle schools was going. First we talked about what Middle School meant to us while former primary teachers jotted down our feelings with a rainbow of felt pens. What a warm feeling we all had. (Was it the happy thoughts or the fact that the heat seems to be higher in the Board Office than at the schools?)

From that colourful diagram we compiled a list of issues that are important to address at the middle school level. Then we broke into groups and discussed how our exemplary middle schools are achieving success in all these areas. For example, if the concept was “Building Social Responsibility” someone might say, “Well, we had that assembly about Crime Stoppers.” (Apparently all you have to do is have a police officer come in and talk to the students for a few minutes and they will all instantly become socially responsible.) Great! We wrote it down; we checked it off. We thought of something for every thing on the list! We are university educated, after all.

I think that was the day I first seriously considered quitting.

There are times, however, when the administrators don’t let the teachers write their own report cards. Sometimes they need hard data to prove to the public that they are addressing all concerns. Reading comprehension tests are perfect for this. You can take something completely subjective and un-measurable and represent it with a number.

In particular, I found the Orca testing interesting. We are told its purpose is not just to create a reportable number grade on how we’re doing; it’s really to give us feedback on how we can better serve our students. How admirable! I wonder why, then, that I did this testing with the class to which I only taught Science. It’s too bad their English teacher didn’t get to see how she could teach them reading better. Of course if we were actually following the exemplary middle school model I might have been teaching my advisory class more than just Science. Oh well.


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My favourite part about our Orca tests, however, was that we were able to use our data to evaluate progress over time. We did the test twice in the school year and you wouldn’t believe how successful we were! Was it the brilliance of the teachers? Perhaps it was the fact that the first time we did the test we rounded the results down and the second time we rounded them up. Yes, I was instructed by my team leader to do so. I’m not kidding.

How well are the students really doing? Let’s look at their report cards. This is what I see when I look at my son’s report card: First there is the brown envelope it comes in. It tells me what all the different grades mean (A is excellent, etc.). It doesn’t mention that these grades are all irrelevant to the concept of “passing”; that my middle school child will move on to the next age-segregated grade no matter what. It doesn’t tell me that the grades are subjective and that every teacher marks differently. It doesn’t tell me if the activities graded were relevant to my child, or if he was graded on something he already knew. It doesn’t mention that some activities are graded based on my child’s ability to repeat what the teacher says, while others are supposedly graded on my child’s original thought and creativity. It doesn’t explain how one might grade creativity.

From the brown envelope I pull out the report card “folder”. This is my favourite part. I used to get angry when having to deal with this as a teacher; now, as a parent, I just laugh. How many people know that the folder was a “draft” thrown together by a desperate teacher at the first Victoria middle school, two days before the report cards were supposed to go out? Many teachers at that school complained that it was no where near what we wanted for our regular report card. We were assured that next reporting period it would be worked out in advance. That was four and a half years ago.

Inside the folder is half a forest’s worth of data. Does any of it mean anything? To some people, I guess. They give their kids money for having As or 4s or whatever the achievement of the day is. I’d rather my child got feedback while they were learning, not after. Hmmm, now there’s a concept I know I didn’t come up with first.

One of the saddest things of all is that the system is based on mediocrity. That report card cover is good enough. That assignment is good enough. That evaluation is good enough. We set these arbitrary tasks (for teachers and students) and as long as they’re sort of achieved, we’re happy. Check it off, we did it. At the end of the day, the end of the school year, we have a HUGE list of mostly meaningless things that we’ve done. Sometimes we do them really well; sometimes we barely achieve the minimum acceptable standard. Almost always, the quality of the work (again, for teachers and for students) is dependent on whether it is meaningful to them.

Teaching is very meaningful to me. I get tremendous satisfaction from it. I’ve put a lot of effort into it in a lot of different areas in my life. I care about children and have formed some strong bonds with families that I have worked with. I love learning and teaching, and will continue to do both no matter what profession I’m in.

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However, I get no satisfaction whatsoever from spinning around the wheels of bureaucracy. And the bigger the system gets; the more wasted energy. What is the purpose of the public school system? It’s different for everyone. Every student’s needs are different. We have to be looking at students as individual people if we want to teach them anything, whether it’s math or manners. We claim that middle school is set up so we can make these connections, but do you really expect me to make meaningful connections with 150 grade 8s? How can we be personal in such a gigantic institution?

If I don’t truly know these kids and they don’t know me, I become, at best, the “bwah-bwah-bwah” droning voice of the faceless teacher that Peppermint Patty had such a hard time pleasing in the Peanuts cartoons. At worst, I’m “another brick in the wall” as Pink Floyd put it, actually contributing to the negative attitude so many teenagers have about the “adult world”.

If you see this letter as more than just a disenchanted teacher’s rant; if it has touched on a few things you may be concerned about, please read (or re-read) John Gatto’s Dumbing Us Down. In it, he explains the brutal irony of the public school system: “I began to realize that the bells and confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behaviour.”

I can no longer be a part of such a system. Please accept this letter as my official resignation from my position as teacher in School District #61.

Sincerely,