Teachers Hate Teaching (Unwarranted Student Promotion: Part II)
I’m going to let you in on a secret: teachers fucking hate teaching, and it’s because of unwarranted student promotion. National problems like the teacher shortage, teacher absenteeism, the inability of districts to find substitutes or bus drivers, four day school weeks, and the hiring of unqualified staff are all consequences of the prolific practice perpetuated by social-emotional learning theories that elevate students above their comprehension. The negative, system-wide ramifications of unwarranted promotion cannot be overstated, and they are ultimately what drives teachers from the profession.
If you remember, I asked you to imagine each elementary grade, kindergarten through fifth, as a curriculum book of equal size and educational value. When students are unjustly promoted, they are burdened with towing additional curriculum books to new grade levels, and teachers are encumbered with a similar anchor. That is to say, teachers spend very little meaningful instruction time teaching their single, grade-level curriculum – they often must teach the curriculums of every grade that came before them.
Consequently, grade-level education becomes cursory at best and performative at worst. Unwarranted promotion disfigures education by replacing grade-level mastery with content-based growth. Did the student learn their fifth grade curriculum? Fuck no, but they grew to a second grade reading level. Cool, huh? When classrooms are filled with students unable to engage with grade-level content because they have been promoted outside their comprehension, teaching careers cease to be meaningful. Instead, each day is an arbitrary chore to help students become proficient (a bullshit idea) in any and every skill from all of their previous grades while simultaneously ensuring the classroom terrorists don’t ignite a behavioral IED.
Imagine yourself (and obviously, many of you can easily use your own memories) walking into your classroom on the first day of a new school year. You are excited. You are motivated. You are ready. You are prepared. You’ve got the coolest fucking first day lesson plan ever planned, and you just know that your kids are going to dive head-first into Esperanza Rising after the fiesta you have planned at the end of the day. But then you discover all your preparation, all your lesson planning was for nothing. You were prepared to critically analyze literature but were given students requiring phonics. It is demoralizing, disheartening, and unsatisfying. Grade-level instruction gets focused towards a few capable students, and the rest sit idly by, unable to develop their minds. Even worse, some of those incapable students eventually reveal themselves as the classroom terrorists that they are, and social-emotional learning doctrine does not adequately prepare teachers to manage such students.
The response of policy makers and public school districts to the lack of educational success created through social-emotional learning indoctrination and unwarranted promotion has been to overburden teachers with time-consuming and resource-wasting administrative and clerical roles that are unrelated to the function of teaching and the concept of learning. No, teachers don’t need to create data notebooks for students multiple grade-levels behind – we already have a motherfucking gradebook. Furthermore, teachers should not have to create data notebooks to track whether their student multiple grade levels behind learned a rudimentary skill – it’s not their motherfucking job! It’s not why you fucking hired that teacher! If you want your fourth and fifth grade teachers to provide kindergarten and first grade instruction, then simply hire more kindergarten and first grade teachers! No, teachers don’t need to create reading success plans because a group of assholes made a new state law. I already know the kid can’t read. The kid already knows the kid can’t read. No reading success plan is going to change that. Ever. No, I don’t need a child to lead their own parent-teacher conference, thank you. Why the fuck would anyone think a child could lead a conference on their own education anyway? They’re in fucking school for a reason. No, I don’t need to hold small groups Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to remediate the short vowel sound. Fuck all that. No, we don’t need to hold multi-tiered system of support meetings every six weeks. The child couldn’t add in second grade, they couldn’t add in third grade, data shows they couldn’t add in fourth grade, so I’m going to go ahead and assume they can’t add in fifth grade either. And no, I’m not going to fucking work on it with them.
The negative national phenomena that we see regarding our profession, the national teacher shortage, teacher absenteeism, four day school weeks, and a lack of adequate staff, are all directly related to the public school system’s perpetuation of unwarranted student promotion. No one wants to do our job because it fucking sucks. If a kid can’t learn to read by the fifth grade, then why the fuck does it matter if I take today and tomorrow off? If a school is comprised of classroom terrorists, of course substitutes and bus drivers are going to avoid those environments. Qualified, experienced teachers are leaving the public school system, new teachers are just now fucking around enough to find out, and school districts with vacant positions are left with two options: cut the number of school days each week or hire unqualified staff.
The public school system’s loyalty to social-emotional learning theories is a nation-sized middle finger to educators, and many teachers have made their feelings known by giving their middle finger right back and exiting the profession. Social-emotional learning theories that perpetuate unjustified student promotion are draining the talent from the public education profession, and it is detrimental to American society and the ethos of the American Dream.
