A Sense of Doubt blog post #2506 - AMERICA HATES TEACHERS - Just give them the %$#@! money - Teachers grab for Cash
When I first saw this news item, before I even read about it, just seeing the picture and knowing what it was, it made me SO ANGRY!
It Will Be A Great Day When The Military Has To 'Dash For Cash' On Ice And Teachers ... Don't?https://t.co/7r3G0sznUg
— Wonkette (@Wonkette) December 14, 2021
Who thought up this great idea to humiliate teachers and even better get teachers to VOUNTEER for the public humiliation spectacle????
Like Jessica Wildfire on MEDIUM.
Her article is fucking brilliant, and I don't mind adding a "fucking" adjective to that "brilliant" in case you didn't "get" how high in esteem I have placed this article and Jessica Wildfire.
Head over to Medium and subscribe to her channel.
https://jessicalexicus.medium.com/and-you-wonder-why-so-many-teachers-are-quitting-e05e19216c42
And You Wonder Why So Many Teachers Are Quitting
Take a good hard look.
Jessica Wildfire
Unfluencer. | Also on Substack: https://jessicawildfire.substack.com/
Imagine your first day at a new job, your boss explains how he’s going to pay you. He leads you into an arena with ten other employees, where he proceeds to throw fist fulls of cash in the air. You have to dash around on all fours, scooping up dollar bills and shoving them into your pockets and under your shirt, maybe your bra if you’re wearing one.
Meanwhile, thousands of customers laugh and cheer. You’re not even the main event. You’re the half time show.
Would you feel insulted?
This is exactly what a hockey team made teachers do in South Dakota, a state that ranks near the bottom in education, including teacher pay. Fans watched a handful of teachers lunge around on their hands and knees for money to fund their classroom projects.
I almost cried.
It’s not just harmless fun.
Yeah, I know what a lot of people are ready to say:
“But the teachers volunteered for this!”
“They had fun!”
“They said thanks!”
“They should be grateful.”
Think about what you’re saying. You’re telling me — a teacher — that I should be willing to crawl around on my hands and knees not just for my salary, but for the tools and supplies I need for work.
That’s what you think of me.
It’s not enough that teachers already put in more hours than almost any other profession, second only to nurses. It’s not enough that we risk our lives every single day, enduring the endless threat of school shootings on top of deadly viruses. It’s not enough that many of us can barely afford to pay our bills. You want to turn our poverty into entertainment.
This is how we’re honored.
These teachers weren’t given medals for the sacrifices they made over the last year. Nobody saluted them. Trash bags of cash were dumped onto a strip of carpet for them to scramble over, and they weren’t even given pouches. They were stuffing bills into their clothes.
I wouldn’t treat a dog like that.
America hates teachers.
I’m just going to come out and say it.
The public hates us.
I feel this hatred and resentment every single day. Sometimes, it’s faint. Other times it’s right in my face, like when my bosses give me a chocolate bar and call it a bonus, or they demand we show up for an 8 am meeting on our day off, and then cancel it at the very last minute, or when parents yell and threaten to sue us, or fire us, or murder us.
Think I’m exaggerating?
Teachers get as much abuse as cashiers and servers. The only difference is you have to get a master’s degree first.
(Usually…)
We’re used to being broke. We already hold bake sales and banquets to raise money for our classrooms. I guess it’s not enough. Now, faced with pandemics and school shootings every other week, we have to reserve our evenings to crawl around for spare cash.
People think it’s cute.
There’s lots of ways a hockey team could’ve teased teachers with money. They could’ve made them try to score a goal, or race on skates. Anything short of a cage match would’ve been better than this.
Anything.
We’re barely treated like humans.
The video says what a majority of Americans have always thought about teachers. They just haven’t said it:
We’re expendable.
Our feelings don’t matter. Our ideas don’t matter.
Nobody has a problem with us working 10 or 12 hours a day, or paying for the supplies our students use. We’re talking about hundreds of dollars a year. No other job does this. For us, it’s normal. Our bosses brag about how we’d work for free, and we basically do.
Nobody thinks twice about stuffing us in buildings that are falling apart, or making us work under life-threatening conditions. Time and again, we’re told our lives come last. Politicians and administrators don’t care how many of us die during a pandemic or a mass shooting. In fact, talking about it is one of the quickest ways to get fired.
Strangers think they can do our jobs, and they think they’re qualified to boss us around. They talk about replacing us with robots one day. The public blames us for everything.
Some of our own family still think we get summers off, even though most of us have two or three jobs all year long.
It’s pathetic.
If you think it’s funny or somehow inspiring to watch teachers do something like this because their schools are broke, then you don’t support teachers. You secretly think they’re worthless. Leave it to a South Dakota hockey team to find a fresh way to humiliate us.
They nailed it.
We’re expected to deal with it.
Teaching is already a demoralizing job.
People get angry when we complain about our working conditions. They expect us to deal with it.
“That’s the job.”
Somehow, putting up with abuse from students and parents has become part of the default job description. Americans are more willing to police a teacher’s tone than take their side in a debate.
If we stay, we’re blamed for that too:
“If it’s so bad, why don’t you quit?”
It’s a good question.
You wouldn’t believe the avalanche of hateful word vomit that some people direct at teachers. They’ll criticize our attitude, right before calling us every nasty name in the urban dictionary.
They enjoy it.
We’re tired of apologies.
At least this time there was a backlash. That’s a little encouraging. Of course, the hockey team and their sponsor released the kind of apology you’d expect from someone who still doesn’t get it:
Although our intent was to provide a positive and fun experience for teachers, we can see how it appears to be degrading and insulting towards the participating teachers and the teaching profession as a whole.
— Sioux Falls Stampede
The question is why they thought it would be “a positive and fun experience” in the first place. Imagine doing something like that to nurses, or police officers, or firefighters.
Let me try to drive it home for you:
In America, we’re so used to schools being chronically under funded and teachers being paid garbage, that millions of people think it’s perfectly okay to dump cash out for them like trash, and have them sift through it on television. This is the kind of thing you’d expect to see in developing countries, not one of the richest nations on earth.
That’s the best we can do…
The hockey team followed up their apology by donating extra money to the teachers who volunteered for this shit show, and I guess that’s a start. It still doesn’t make it okay. They didn’t make amends because they were truly sorry, or they learned anything.
They did it to save face.
Who else would do this?
I’m wondering who else would participate in something like this just for the basic money they needed to do their jobs.
Who else would do that?
Imagine making a bunch of tired nurses scramble for PPE on their day off, then telling them, “We thought it’d be fun.”
Bill Gates or Elon Musk wouldn’t stop on the sidewalk to pick up at twenty. A sex worker would laugh in your face.
Only teachers rank low enough in public opinion for someone to think it’s cute to turn our working conditions into a game. It seemed like harmless entertainment to remind the world the only way teachers can do their jobs is by scrounging and begging. Teachers themselves are so used to this abuse, they don’t even think about it.
They volunteered.
Don’t forget this video.
There’s dozens of books out there about the problems in our public school system, including universities. Almost all of them say we don’t pay our teachers enough, and we don’t treat them with any respect. America invests an embarrassing fraction of its money in learning. The rest goes into our impossibly inflated military.
This is why so many teachers are quitting. It’s why so many school districts can’t find substitutes, or even bus drivers now.
Anyway, you don’t need more statistics.
If you’ve ever needed convincing that America doesn’t take education seriously, just watch this video.
It wasn’t thoughtless.
Making overworked teachers spend their time off scrambling on their hands and knees for cash is an embarrassing confession of what most people think about us. Most of us already knew.
Now we have proof.
Ever wonder what $5,000 one dollar bills look like? pic.twitter.com/q4M1dkorn5
— Annie Todd (@AnnieTodd96) December 12, 2021
The teachers are ready pic.twitter.com/sRh0EgbCCu
— Annie Todd (@AnnieTodd96) December 12, 2021
Here they go! pic.twitter.com/G0MH3Y1VXU
— Annie Todd (@AnnieTodd96) December 12, 2021
Almost done! pic.twitter.com/K8Rr83uzui
— Annie Todd (@AnnieTodd96) December 12, 2021
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2112.28 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2370 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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