School in the New Millennium

People sometimes ask me if I miss teaching. Generally speaking, no. I loved teaching. I loved the kids. I learned, though, that education isn't about them. It's all politics and red tape, with a little too little respect and -- don't know if you've heard -- not enough money. And it's not just me; many of the people I graduated with and who shared my major have left teaching. It's incredibly disheartening to me... and yes, I recognize how hypocritical that sounds. After all, if I cared that much, why did I leave? Look: I'm not about to lead any crusades. I bitch about a lot of stuff, and maybe I can change some of the stuff that pisses me off -- if it's easy. I tried lots of ways to fix this problem. Some were small successes. Everything else was a miserable failure. Experience enough failure and it'll make you quit trying after a while.

Now I'm a parent with a kid who is a couple weeks away from starting preschool. I'm going to become the agent of change again, but from a different side of the table. So look for me to start jumping on bandwagons like this one soon.

Oh, and BTW, where the fuck was this when I was teaching?!