A Teachers Open Letter of Resignation Highlights a System That is Failing Our Children
Teacher Wendy Bradshaw recently wrote an open letter to the American educational system based on fears for her own child’s future in a failing school system. The strict standardisation that higher grades have been subjected to for years has been making its way down, beginning to touch even pre-schoolers with test-based learning. This forces teachers to abandon their beliefs and to the detriment of their students develop teaching plans that aren’t conducive to actual learning. After sending in her letter of resignation, Bradshaw posted it on Facebook where it has now been shared over 50,000 times.
While this letter is aimed at the American Education System, her message resonates here in Australia.
As an educator I too have left the system, and we are encountering more and more teachers leaving their profession as the curriculum is failing our children. You cannot teach what you don’t believe in and this emphasis for standardised testing is robbing our children of a beautiful, magical and optimal opportunity for learning in its most beneficial form.
The letter reads:
To: The School Board of Polk County, Florida
I love teaching. I love seeing my students’ eyes light up when they grasp a new concept and their bodies straighten with pride and satisfaction when they persevere and accomplish a personal goal. I love watching them practice being good citizens by working with their peers to puzzle out problems, negotiate roles, and share their experiences and understandings of the world. I wanted nothing more than to serve the students of this county, my home, by teaching students and preparing new teachers to teach students well. To this end, I obtained my undergraduate, masters, and doctoral degrees in the field of education. I spent countless hours after school and on weekends poring over research so that I would know and be able to implement the most appropriate and effective methods with my students and encourage their learning and positive attitudes towards learning. I spent countless hours in my classroom conferencing with families and other teachers, reviewing data I collected, and reflecting on my practice so that I could design and differentiate instruction that would best meet the needs of my students each year. I not only love teaching, I am excellent at it, even by the flawed metrics used up until this point. Every evaluation I received rated me as highly effective.
Like many other teachers across the nation, I have become more and more disturbed by the misguided reforms taking place which are robbing my students of a developmentally appropriate education. Developmentally appropriate practice is the bedrock upon which early childhood education best practices are based, and has decades of empirical support behind it. However, the new reforms not only disregard this research, they are actively forcing teachers to engage in practices which are not only ineffective but actively harmful to child development and the learning process. I am absolutely willing to back up these statements with literature from the research base, but I doubt it will be asked for. However, I must be honest. This letter is also deeply personal. I just cannot justify making students cry anymore. They cry with frustration as they are asked to attempt tasks well out of their zone of proximal development. They cry as their hands shake trying to use an antiquated computer mouse on a ten year old desktop computer which they have little experience with, as the computer lab is always closed for testing. Their shoulders slump with defeat as they are put in front of poorly written tests that they cannot read, but must attempt. Their eyes fill with tears as they hunt for letters they have only recently learned so that they can type in responses with little hands which are too small to span the keyboard.
The children don’t only cry. Some misbehave so that they will be the ‘bad kid’ not the ‘stupid kid’, or because their little bodies just can’t sit quietly anymore, or because they don’t know the social rules of school and there is no time to teach them. My master’s degree work focused on behavior disorders, so I can say with confidence that it is not the children who are disordered. The disorder is in the system which requires them to attempt curriculum and demonstrate behaviors far beyond what is appropriate for their age. The disorder is in the system which bars teachers from differentiating instruction meaningfully, which threatens disciplinary action if they decide their students need a five minute break from a difficult concept, or to extend a lesson which is exceptionally engaging. The disorder is in a system which has decided that students and teachers must be regimented to the minute and punished if they deviate. The disorder is in the system which values the scores on wildly inappropriate assessments more than teaching students in a meaningful and research based manner.
On June 8, 2015 my life changed when I gave birth to my daughter. I remember cradling her in the hospital bed on our first night together and thinking, “In five years you will be in kindergarten and will go to school with me.” That thought should have brought me joy, but instead it brought dread. I will not subject my child to this disordered system, and I can no longer in good conscience be a part of it myself. Please accept my resignation from Polk County Public Schools.Best,
Wendy Bradshaw, Ph.D.
This brutally raw and open, honest account by Bradshaw highlights a system that is failing and a sentiment that rings true for some of our most dedicated of educators. Many, including myself, are broken and disenchanted with a system that is failing our children. As a mother and an educator, Bradshaw is wanting and pushing for what we all want for our children, a love and an eagerness for learning. The swing and the push for standardised testing is putting pressure on vulnerable little shoulders and is forgetting that early childhood development does not just involve the ABC’s and 1,2,3’s, it is complex, it is intricate and it is fragile. What use is a society that is merely literate and numerical if we cannot work and function together at a social level? When did learning through play, learning through interactive, tactile and real experience, learning through scaffolded, catered and individualised programming become such a taboo in our early years? I am a disenchanted teacher and I too worry for the future of our children’s educational experiences.
