I say this as someone who has been an educator from thirteen years: getting out of the traditional public school system has been a dream come true. I highly recommend it.
There is much I could say regarding everything I feel like isn't working in the traditional education system. Kids are grouped together based on their age. They are moved up from grade to grade regardless of whether or not they have mastered the concepts. And the pressure is on teachers to execute the learning standards handed down by the state, telling you what you must teach, at what time.
Herein lies the problem: not all children learn the same way. Not all children learn at the prescribed pace that the content is being churned out. And with the pressure on us as classroom teachers to keep up, to maintain the expected grade level rigor, there isn't energy at all left to devote to helping those who have fallen behind catch up.
As such, in my roles as a middle and high school English teacher, I have so many children filling up desks in my classroom who have reading levels as low as first and second grade, children who can barely write. They're just pushed on, passed on, as if they were items on a factory conveyer belt. They never received the individual attention they desperately needed in their younger days.
And as someone who is now a product of the environment in which I must survive in order to keep my job, I feel I am essentially a bigger part of the problem than I wish. I've tried in moments to fight back against the pressure and demands, to try to push to make time and space for desperately needed remediation that is personalized, individualized. I've done this to the point of going to war in moments, ending up on the wrong side of the wrong people and nearly getting fired.
The field of education, sadly, does not cater to the non-conformists. It is based on the utmost conformity. It serves no one.
And this is only a small part of the problem.
I spent seven years in early childhood education working with preschoolers, in settings that were basically commercial daycares. These entities existed because parents must work. Someone else must care for their children.
I came to realize that public schools were little more than daycares for older children. Some place for them to be watched over so parents could work. The illusion that school was about education was shattered during the Covid days. I should have known better. We don't live in any kind of world in which the majority of people, even in two parent homes, can afford the luxury of one person staying home to raise children.
People were desperate, they pushed back against school closures, and I understood--I had been there. Once upon a time, I was a single mother with two young daughters working at a daycare during the day and a grocery store at night. If the Covid closures happened during this phase of my life, I would have been desperate, too. I will never forget where I came from.
But honestly, I think it isn't just the school system that's broken, I think it's the whole world that's broken. Everyone should have choices where their children and families are concerned. There should be a Universal Basic Income enough to provide people with enough to fall back on so that if they choose, their children won't have to be cared for by others. It should be a choice. For many, nay, most, there isn't such thing as a choice. The only choice is to scramble and scrape and work yourself into the ground with so little to show for it.
But I digress.
I don't like that we live in a world in which people don't have choices, where children are outside before the sun has even risen in the cold standing and waiting for the bus to take them to a prison-like building where they will be controlled and herded around for the next eight hours. The conditions are overcrowded. Everyone is in everyone else's space.
And then comes the bullying, the negativity, all the bad experiences that can come from being trapped in a space with hateful, cruel people you can't get away from. It is hell on earth. Damage is done to vulnerable children that may never be undone. We've heard the stories, we've beheld the statistics, and some of us, including myself, have lived it.
When I had a breakdown/burnout in October and I had the opportunity to get out, I took my daughters who are 9 and 11 with me.
Our district has a Virtual Academy into which they were welcomed eagerly. My girls are very strong students--my 9 year old is above-above average in math and science, legitimately gifted all around; my 11 year old is gifted in ELA. They are both functioning on 10th grade levels across the board in all their subjects. They are now receiving individualized attention that wasn't available to them in public school.
They will never have to know what it is like to be bullied. They will never be trapped in a hell of social torment. Everything that tortured and damaged me during my formative years I have effectively prevented them from experiencing.
They wake up and can go to school in their pajamas. They have a homemade breakfast while they attend homeroom. Their classes are done by lunchtime. The rest of the afternoon is focused on asynchronous work that they can complete at their own pace.
And we get to enjoy moments like these:
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