A coach (who doesn't work at my school) stopped me in the hallway to see if she could observe my reading lesson which was about to happen in 5 minutes. After the lesson she sat me down and gave me feedback.

I finally figured out why it bothered me so much. I only coach student teachers this year but I've done coaching in previous years. And I would never do this to a teacher.
Here's why: a teacher not prepared for feedback is not responsive to feedback. I felt I was being evaluated without purpose and without consent.

Someone (not in education) was surprised to hear that teachers have to set up their own classrooms.

She thought we had someone to do that for us and we just walk in the first day and start teaching. I had to explain it takes days of prep + physical labor. And we don’t get paid. So in case anyone didn’t know. Yes. We haul bookcases and drag desks around the room. We climb on furniture to hang charts, put up bulletin boards.

In elementary, we teach multiple subjects so there are tons of books & manipulatives to organize. Centers to create. Signs. Tech.

Educators are dealing with immense pressure to go back to normal. But 2 little things keep getting in the way:

1) Normal wasn't really working.
2) We can't. We learned a lot about ourselves as educators in the past 20 months. We also got a lot of good insights about the educational system & the way it continues to operate independent of the humans involved.

Yesterday during a PD they asked what’s causing you stress & I put in the chat “they keep making us go back to normal and normal wasn’t working”

Today in a meeting my principal asked me what I meant by that. She gave me the chance to say more. So I did. Everyone might hate me soon bc I plan to spend the next 4 months talking about how we should stop doing bad stuff to kids.

Doing bad stuff to kids is universally recognized as NOT what our work is. Yet we do bad stuff to kids every day. Let me explain:

"Israeli-Palestinian conflict"
"people are dying"
"complicated"

Is this what you think the #antiracist, #SocialJustice #EdTwitter community asked for?

You should do better, because you know better.
Name the injustices. Speak the truth. Do the work.

https://twitter.com/learnforjustice/status/1395128236972126221

Educators looking for resources here's a starting point. teachpalestine.org

Can we stop saying children are resilient? It’s not resilience, we’re just forcing them to deal with difficult things and they deal with it because they have no power and no choice in the matter. Thinking what this generation of children will say about their childhood in 20 years.

We have no capacity to understand what the impact of this pandemic will be on them.

Stop dismissing their misery and their pain by praising their resiliency.

Listen. Empathize. Help.

just got off a staff information session zoom. i want to quit.

what they’re doing to us and to the kids. it’s nothing short of criminal. how do we expect children to learn in this environment? masks. shields. no physical interactions. no recess. water fountains shut off. all day in a chair.