Digging Deeper

While teacher layoffs in NYC were narrowly averted this year, one of the casualties of tighter budgets was Teacher's Choice, a program that reimbursed teachers for a small amount of the out of pocket expenses that they have each year.  At it's height, Teacher's Choice gave public school teachers $220 while last year it was $110.  While this amount is hardly enough to cover all of the extras and even essentials that teachers buy each year, it has always seemed at least an acknowledgment of the money that teachers spend to provide for their students. 

While the UFT insists that teacher's choice is not to be spent on basic supplies, but rather on enrichment activities, it seems that that is where the money always seems to go.  With smaller budgets, principals are forced to cut things they see as the least essential; and, when faced with the choice of cutting valuable personal or supplies, it's often the supplies that are first to go.  So, as Teacher's Choice is lost and budgets to individual schools are cut, it is me and my colleagues who are being asked to "dig even deeper" to provide essentials for their students.

While the pockets of the state and city get even tighter, NYC school teachers are digging deeper and deeper into their own small pockets.  How soon before there is no deeper to dig?

Show Me You're Ready...

It's a phrase I use in my classroom everyday.  I say it without thought and enforce it without hesitation.  "Show me you are ready to learn.  Show me you are ready to read.  Show me you are ready to listen." And my children do. 

For educators there is so much power in showing.  It is much more powerful than saying. We model how to do everything because our students don't learn from us telling them something, they learn from us showing them something. 

And just as we show them, they show us.  They show us that they are ready to learn something new by asking questions, by their intent looks, by their body language.  Or, they show us they are not ready by their chatting, their blank looks or their defiant behavior.  But their showing always proves more powerful than their saying.

The same holds true for our principals, our politicians, our policy makers.  Many of them say they are for our children, but their actions and policies show us that they are not.

So...

Show me you're ready...
to listen.
to read.
to write.
to believe.
to fight.
to change.
to learn.