Homeless Teachers - Why We Are Failing
If you’re wondering why our educational system is failing, and by extension, why we’re failing as a nation…go read this article in the Washington Post, “Students loved this teaching assistant. They didn’t know he was living in his car,” by Kyle Swenson. And, yes, you got that headline right. Charles Peacock was a much loved teaching assistant at a Florida school. But he was being paid so little—less than $1000 a month—that he was reduced to living in his car.
And he isn’t alone. Teachers and paraprofessionals (teaching assistants, aides, and so on) are being routinely underpaid across the country. That’s combined with the fact that teaching becomes a less attractive profession with seemingly every passing day. Activist school boards rail against everything from Critical Race Theory to evolution. Politicians who cannot control their own teenagers never-the-less feel qualified to dictate teachers’ day to day schedules and curriculums. Business professionals hold educators in ill-concealed contempt for not choosing a “paying profession.”
And, of course, what all this means is educators leave the profession, and our educational system grows ever more ineffective.
So, next time you’re wondering why America seems to be coming apart at the seams…here’s a pretty good place to look for answers.
We are losing the future, because we don’t want to educate the present.
~mjt
Source:
“Students loved this teaching assistant. They didn’t know he was living in his car,” by Kyle Swenson, Washington Post, Nov 29, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/11/29/florida-homeless-teaching-assistant/
Copyright©2021 Michael Jay Tucker
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