Common Core-frustrated teacher’s resignation letter: ‘My profession … no longer exist

[Revmitchell]

Much has been said about the frustration of parents and children in navigating the Common Core curriculum standards, but now more teachers are beginning to speak out.

Educators say they believe the curriculum is “demeaning their profession,” and those who have had enough are simply quitting, according to the Washington Post.
I quit

Photo credit: Washington Post

Veteran social studies teacher Gerald J. Conti, is one of those at the end of his rope. He has submitted a resignation letter to Westhill High School in Syracuse, N.Y., saying that after 27 years at the school, he can no longer continue.

Conti explained how he devoted his free time immersed in research, always wanting to be on top of the topics covered in his classroom, but “never feeling satisfied” that he knew enough.

“I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised,” he wrote. “STEM rules the day and ‘data driven’ education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education and particularly not at Westhill.”

http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/03...-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists-105574

 

[ktn4eg]

We need to get rid of the onerous burden that the Washington, DC-based (and very extreme left-wing biased) Department of [Mis-]Education has imposed on what are really "Government-Controlled 'Politically-Correct Indoctrination Centers'" (code for our so-called "Public[?] Schools").

Our "Education Bureaucrats" within the District of Columbia [i.e., Washington, DC] "Beltway" has no business imposing what are (for the most part) useless and ill-advised "National Education Standards" which in reality have very little to do with actually improving our nation's elementary and high school students' academic achievement scores.

For about the past fifty years or so, we've not only seen our nation's students' achievement scores rapidly decline, but also we've experienced an increase in so-called "College Developmental Courses" at our nation's college campuses.

What these "Developmental Courses" are forced to present to their students are merely basic information that should have been presented in our upper elementary and/or high school curricula.

As a result, we now have high school "graduates[?]" seeking employment in the job market who don't even have the faintest idea of how businesses should operate, much less the very basic skills that are vitally needed in them!

At about the same time that prayer and Bible reading and/or Bible classes were removed from our "public[?]" schools, the level of academic performance of our nation's students began to experience a corresponding decline.

Instead of being a place where real academic learning ought to occur, we now find our schools becoming places where uncalled for and mean-spirited bullying takes place.

It's no small wonder that many of our students are frightened to even want to attend our "public[?] schools" anymore.

What was once a place where the main problems were merely talking in class and/or students passing notes to each other, we now find that (in many cases throughout our nation) our children are faced with having so-called "School Resource (i.e., armed police) Officers" escort them from class to class.

We've traded our schools from what were once places where one would notice things as the Ten Commandments posted to what are now, in many cases, combat zones where our children are faced with gunfire, physical and mental assaults, rape, and who knows what else that goes on that isn't reported to "the powers that be" for fear of even more brutal retaliation.

The ungodly and atheistic humanists have for the past several decades been in control of our educational bureaucracy, and now we are confronted with the results that they have produced.

If the current trends continue (and I see little hope for them being reversed in the foreseeable future) IMHO, it's not a very optimistic outlook for either our nation's "public[?] schools" or for our children who are forced to attend them.

(....Sigh.... :tear

 

[Salty]

...Veteran social studies teacher Gerald J. Conti, is one of those at the end of his rope. He has submitted a resignation letter to Westhill High School in Syracuse, N.Y., saying that after 27 years at the school, he can no longer continue. ...

Lets read between the lines Mark!
Lets face it - he did NOT resign - he RETIRED! 27 years of teaching - he has a nice retirement check every month.

Would he have resigned after 8 years of teaching (needing 10 years to be vested).

BTW, in his resignation lettter - he states he wants to work as a subisitute.

Just Saying.....

PS
Westhill is an excellent school - My niece is a grad of the school.

 

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

We need to get rid of the onerous burden that the Washington, DC-based (and very extreme left-wing biased) Department of [Mis-]Education has imposed on what are really "Government-Controlled 'Politically-Correct Indoctrination Centers'" (code for our so-called "Public[?] Schools").

Assembly-line education, making education like Ford makes trucks. One size fits all, no room for innovation, everybody gets the same thing, with a few options that will make your education feel unique, but it won't be. New York mayor William de Blasio is trying to shut down charter schools in the city, despite former mayor Michael Bloomberg giving them a contract, because they provide exceptional education to inner city youth, kids that otherwise wind up in gangs, on drugs, and dead. Why is de Blasio doing that? Because liberals don't like sliding scales. They like everything to be the same. They don't want "best and brightest" they want uniformity and dullness.

Lets read between the lines Mark!
Lets face it - he did NOT resign - he RETIRED! 27 years of teaching - he has a nice retirement check every month.

He wasn't going to retire. He wanted to teach much longer. He felt he couldn't. He gets a check, but so what? It wasn't what he wanted. CORE isn't what he wanted. It robbed him of his love for teaching, and when he lost that, he lost the desire to do so,

Westhill is an excellent school - My niece is a grad of the school.

Don't count on it remaining so.

 

[Rippon]

'My profession...no longer exists.'

Mr. Conti had it spelled correctly.

 

[Earth Wind and Fire]

Mr. Conti had it spelled correctly.

You should consider renaming yourself.

 

[Salty]

Assembly-line education, making education like Ford makes trucks. One size fits all,o.

Bad analogy - there are probably about 300+ variations of Ford Trucks....

...Would he have resigned after 8 years of teaching (needing 10 years to be vested). ...

T#D, Did you forget to comment on the other statement I made - (which I quoted above)
and RevMitchell - waiting on your answer as well.

 

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

Bad analogy - there are probably about 300+ variations of Ford Trucks....

And if you took them all apart and laid the parts out side by side, you could put any one part from any one truck on any other truck. Don't get me wrong, I love Ford trucks. I drive one for my on-the-side building business and to haul the wife's dirt, fertilizer, mulch, cow flop soil (yeah, for the tomatoes) and all the other stuff that truck is good for hauling. In fact, I dare say, Ford trucks are the best built. That doesn't mean the method of building a great truck is a great way to educate a child. It isn't.

T#D, Did you forget to comment on the other statement I made - (which I quoted above) ...

I commented ...

He wasn't going to retire. He wanted to teach much longer. He felt he couldn't. He gets a check, but so what? It wasn't what he wanted. CORE isn't what he wanted. It robbed him of his love for teaching, and when he lost that, he lost the desire to do so,Don't count on it remaining so.

 

[Salty]

And if you took them all apart and laid the parts out side by side, you could put any one part from any one truck on any other truck. ...

Some major assemblies yes - but there are so many variations of Ford Trucks - that is one reason, I am no longer a Ford Salesman ...

But to the other point - would he have "resigned" had he not be eligible for a retirement check?

 

[Revmitchell]

As long as he would have continued to work otherwise he resigned. This thread is not about whether he resigned or retired. Move on.

 

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

Some major assemblies yes - but there are so many variations of Ford Trucks - that is one reason, I am no longer a Ford Salesman ...

Wish I'd known you when I bought my last one. :laugh:

It's about time for a trade. Any suggestions? Know anyone in my neck of the woods?

But to the other point - would he have "resigned" had he not be eligible for a retirement check?

None of us can answer that question definitively. But I think there's a clue in his love of research and his lament that such an approach to education is now "devalued." Someone with that amount of dedication to educating students wouldn't have retired, in my opinion, until they dragged him kicking and screaming from the classroom and gave him his first pension check.