2. Introduction to the Mess: We Don't Need Another Hero (Part II)

In this episode of the Rebel Teachers Rising Podcast, the hosts continue their introduction to the series, discussing various 'messes' within the K-12 education system in the U.S. They stress the need for a national K-12 educator governing board to address issues like poor literacy rates, ineffective reading curriculums, inequitable working conditions, and the lack of teacher autonomy. The episode highlights the systemic flaws exacerbating these messes, such as income inequalities, special education inadequacies, and mental health crises among teachers and students. Upcoming episodes will feature stories from guest teachers sharing personal experiences and solutions, aiming to empower educators to advocate for substantial changes to sustain democracy and improve public education.

00:00 Introduction to Rebel Teachers Rising Podcast
00:26 Overview of the Podcast Series
02:09 The Reading Mess in K-12 Education
05:44 Highlighting Expert Contributions
10:41 Climate and Culture in Schools
17:12 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Challenges
22:04 Special Education Struggles
27:35 Teacher Health and Well-being
34:10 Teacher Autonomy and AI Concerns
37:51 Conclusion and Call to Action

https://www.k-12confidential.com/

Transcript

 Welcome back to the Rebel Teachers Rising Podcast, the apolitical but highly opinionated podcasts, which centers teachers, voices, and teachers' expertise to help save our nation and our precious and fragile democracy. From party politics, both sides of the political divide. Boo. So today is part two of introduction to all of the episodes on the podcast.

We started with the first part of our introduction, which was Amanda, Jess, and I. Talking about what brought us into this discussion, how we have begun this process of investigating and uncovering all these messes, and then touching upon each of the messes and really reflecting on what we've learned over the course of the investigative journalism and interviews that we've compiled to bring to you as our evidence of why we need a K 12.

Educator governing board at the national level. And stay tuned for our next episode, Theresa Copeland, true Live. I'm a teacher on Instagram, tells all about being fired for having an Instagram account and how her story intersects with almost every single mess that we unpack on our series. Enjoy part two of Introduction To The Mess.

We don't need another hero. We know you sense it. You see that there is something terribly wrong in our world. Are you confused about how we got here? We have a huge missing piece of the puzzle that's been kept from you rebel teachers who are shining a light on the mess in K through 12 schooling. That is eroding our democracy from within.

No one wants our job anymore. That's just the tip of the iceberg. We're creating a space for fellow rebels to speak truth to power, and offer love and hope for the world. We are rebel teachers. Rising.

The reading mess is our proof about how bad it is because we are in the bottom half, and that's conservative of the world for literacy rates. And if you're. Using very reliable data. By the way, the data's not there. It's been hidden from the American people. We may even be in the bottom quarter of the world.

We're just not exactly sure. The CIA World Factbook, our own central intelligence agency has not been publishing our literacy rates and their quality of Life indicators book since I've been checking since 2015. But they are publishing it for all the other nations. Though this year I noticed. A lot of European Union nations data is also not being published, and I think it's because they're trying very hard to not shine a light on how bad things are in the United States.

But we are an embarrassment and the textbook companies that brought us to this place we're we're no longer effectively self-governing because of our illiteracy rates are still selling their crap to the American people and getting away with it. The reading mess. Jess, what do you want folks to know about it?

Well, I think anyone who's been in a classroom can relate to the reading mess because every year you're given a roster of students and there is going to be a percentage of the students. They cannot read. It doesn't matter what kind of school you're in, where you're at, and maybe, maybe they can read, but not on grade level, right?

Like that is the one thing that I think every single teacher has in common, other than maybe kindergarten teachers, right? They're starting at square zero right there. But every teacher I've ever talked to, they always have these kids in their classes that cannot read and. It really depends on where you're at.

Um, in, in districts like mine, we're seeing as, as high a numbers as 80% of students in the room cannot read. And it's just this year that they've been doing a, a switch back to phonics. Like, well, I. Maybe if we teach the sounds of letters, some people will start to pick up on them. And so we've, everyone's getting letters, uh, certified now and teaching phonics, which is the first time in my 14 years as an educator that it's been brought back.

And I think some of it is like these horrible reading scores and, and stuff. Like we're just, but we're just scraping, we're scraping the barrel at this point, trying to figure out how do we. How did we get to this point and how do we go back? And I think it's really rich and hilarious that the big textbook companies now are diving into the science of reading, which is phonics, right?

They're all diving into it hardcore, like they're putting their, slapping the label on all the text. Books now, uh, science of Reading Certified, and it's like, well, okay, so you're gonna try this approach. Let's see how it works. But you're still going with the old credit curriculum that all the teachers know is boring for kids.

Is it gonna work? I don't know. I don't know yet. But, uh, the reading mess is very interesting. We have a expert, we have a reading expert that comes on and talks to us and she leaves us a plethora of resources that you can access and really interesting stuff in that series. So I look forward to people listening to it.

Yeah, that reminds me. We wanna point out our beautiful experts from all over the country that have come on our podcast to help do these different themes, justice, right? So, uh, Janet Nassar is our reading expert that helps us well round out our, and our knowledge there. I'm very passionate about the reading mess, but we also talk about the right to read, um, which is Kareem Weaver's project with LaVar Burton, but in the teacher preparation and pay mess.

I also wanna point out, um, another expert that came on, Janice Cook, right? She is a person who left the profession, and it is one of those stories who, if you ever have like. Daydreamed about quitting. Listen to Janice. She did it for all of us. And she talks about East Coast. She talks about Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, right?

'cause we're on the West coast. We're Nevada, Washington and California. That's our purview, right? So it's really important to get a really diverse group. So that's essential. That's absolutely essential. And also in. Our next episode where we do a second installment on the introduction to the Mess we have who?

Theresa Copeland True, true life. I'm a teacher. She is amazing, and I'm really excited to have her on. I've followed her on Instagram, a creepily doctor for at least seven or eight years now. Seen her at conferences. I mean, I was very excited to get her on the show, and she just has such a beautiful story to share.

About her experience as a teacher, and I'm hoping she'll come on for a lot more episodes. Yeah, me too. She like, Janice's story is about how she gloriously quit because she got her side hustle to replace her income. Um, Theresa Copeland's story is about getting fired for being an amazing good. Teacher that is trying to draw attention to some of the problems in our profession.

And so we have so many amazing people who come on and I'm just so grateful to everybody who's come on. We have other people. We have a quitting story by a teacher by the name of Kelvin Mack who took, told the profession they could keep it and quit. Um, but. When we were talking about the reading mess, you know, one of the biggest problems we see in student behavior is really because of the fact that they cannot access their education because of various reasons.

One of them being they can't read well enough to access the content. Um, and my sister is in one of those episodes and I just wanted to say that her story is, um, oh my gosh, it's heartbreaking. And it's a, it's a story from the perspective of a student who went. Through school not being able to read and, um, and what that's like.

Uh, and I just, I, and also when I talked to my sister and when we recorded these episodes, I realized that I have a lot of, um, trauma, I, I will say trauma around not being able to help kids. Learn to read and, and help struggling students. And like in education, we have these terms, these catchall terms that we're supposed to be doing that I just don't, I think are so loaded, like differentiation.

Um, and I just, I. I really, it's so hard to be a teacher who is knowledgeable and cares and, and like doing your own research. I know you did that Trina, trying to figure out how can I help these kids and still coming up short. And so I just, it's, it's really, really hard because we aren't trained, like in the teacher preparation mess.

We talk a lot about that. Like we aren't trained in dyslexia. We aren't trained in how to identify these things or just, just to help a kid who's behind. No. Yeah. Thank you. And, and the point we make in the reading mess is that, okay, so K 12 education has been found out as being poor at teaching reading, and they're gonna say they've addressed it with their Science of Reading curriculum.

I say no, because as long as you are not getting involvement and creation of content from your only experts, which are the nation's first and second grade teachers, if they're not the ones creating our content, we're gonna continue to make messes like this over and over again. Like if we're not leaning into the expert knowledge in general from K through 12, pre-K through 12.

If those aren't the people who are setting the standards, who are creating the standards of practice, of everything we do, we are gonna continue to make these mistakes. So you can course correct all you want. K 12, big textbooks. Uh, the Emperor has no clothes. You Naked. Okay, the, let's talk about the climate and culture mess.

What do we want folks to know? Because I. I've been in schools and it, by the way, this is a catchall stupid phrase. I love that you brought this up a second ago, Amanda. Like these terms, they're just so loaded or they mean nothing. But in K 12 education, climate and culture is really just how a campus feels in the moment and how it functions over time.

And really it's coded language for how crazy or unsafe a campus might feel. And. I think all three of us agree, and we say this in that theme, that it's not the kid's fault. It's just not the kid's fault. There's a failure of imagination, of grit, tenacity, um, and care. I. Also the soft bigotry of low expectations.

I got that quote from Kareem Weaver involved in the failures of a climate and culture on our campus. But as I said before, I first became involved in this mess because I had students coming to me who'd been downright raped on a middle school campus, and I couldn't find anybody who could care enough to do anything about it, despite 50-year-old federal law requiring us to do something about it.

Jess, what do you want people to know about the climate and culture mess? I, I do like to think of it as. The teachers' work life. This is so much of what makes up our work life is the climate and culture. At our school, yes, we're teaching, we're teaching students about 90% of the day, and that is a big part of it.

But if the climate and culture is bad, and I think I talked about this in my episode, it's kind of like this, this umbrella hanging over the school. It's just, it's hard to ignore. And a lot of it comes from the principal's philosophies, the way administration is dealing with people, the, uh, how the coworkers have been taught to, to handle problems and situations.

And it really can make or break a place. Like if a place has good climate and culture, the teachers will stay at that school, even if the students or the population is. Is can be challenging, right? Like if teachers love the climate and culture, they'll stay. And I don't understand, as in my experience, principals do not care that much about climate and culture.

They have their own thing that they're doing and they just, they, they kind of, I don't know, like in my experience. They're, they're not the biggest fans of making schools a welcoming, safe place for teachers. Just in my, I've only taught at seven schools, but I'm just saying, I would say maybe one of the seven had a good climate and culture of the seven schools I've taught at six of the seven.

I would not recommend, I would leave bad Yelp reviews out. It's been, it's it, they've been, they've been rough. Right. And I just think to myself like, I wish that this is, like, I wish that the higher ups, the people making all these decisions knew how much climate and culture impacts educators and teachers and how that kind of trickles down to the students.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's a trickle down type. It does kind of, it impacts the students, happy teachers, happier students. I do believe this, and almost every place I've ever worked at all of the teachers are miserable. Miserable. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I mean, canned character education, canned behavioral interventions suck too.

That's part of the problem is we're buying more crap from corporations to address these problems. And in districts I've been in, they do say they care about climate and culture, but they cook their books, they cook their books to make their data look good on paper, um, or they're not looking at the right things.

And we're, that's gonna bring us to the DEI mess in a moment, but I wanna hear from Amanda about the climate and culture mess. Well, I've taught, and I know both of you have, have this experience as well. I think we're very rare teachers in that we have a wide, vast range of experiences. So Title one schools, right?

Um, and then high achieving, I. Schools and I just, I think it's bad everywhere. And I, I actually, I really do want to bring up this book 'cause I currently teach in a high achieving school and I do think that it's, things are getting worse and worse and worse, um, especially since the pandemic. Uh, but there's this book that I read, um, that's I think a really important book, especially for.

Parents and teachers who are working with students who are in kind of a high achievement culture. Um, it's called Never Enough, um, by Jennifer Brie Henny Wallace. Uh, and it's about when achievement culture becomes toxic. And I do think that, um, I. There's just, and then there's a lot of things that are happening in schools that are not in the news, and I've had these experiences before because these kids are minors, and so there's things that are going on in schools that are just so appalling and it's just being swept under the rug.

I. That was so well said. Thank you, Amanda. Yeah, I, and really thank you for bringing up the COVID Lockdowns because we talk about the effects of COVID Lockdowns a lot and frustratingly, no one in our leadership came back from Lockdowns with a plan, and they still don't. How many years out are we now? The kids are not the same.

We have a special edition episode when Saturday Night Live, put out a sketch called Y'all one starring Maya Rudolph, in which they talk about how last school year we're wrapping up 24, 25, but they were talking about 2324. School year was such a poop show that it's just teachers in battle just giving up.

They made it into comedy, which is a satire, which I love. I just taught my kids about juvenile. The creator of satire in ancient Rome and satire is how we all cope with the tragedies that are unfolding around us. And so, thank you, Amanda, because yes, we talk about COVID lockdowns, um, which. You know, the DEI mess kind kind of flows out of that because in the DEI mess, it's hard 'cause it's such a loaded and charged, emotionally charged topic.

So much a part of the political culture wars going on and we don't want it to be that way. But what we do wanna say is, look. DEI is just about creating a way of life on your campus. The way you teach how the kids are interacting with behavioral interventions, that gets them to the best possible version of themselves, right?

And. We are so diverse, we need to have a diverse set of stuff that tricks that we use, right? But the problem with the D-E-I-M-S is not should we have DEI or not, which is what you're hearing in the culture wars. Again, like everything in K 12, it's far more nuanced and hidden. The problem is that what work there has been done, what work has taken place in K 12 has been ironically exclusionary and it excludes.

Most of the kids who would fall in the DEI work and we're just talking about historically marginalized students, students living in poverty, females, of course L-G-B-T-Q-I-A, and regardless of your political ideas about whether or not you think they should even exist or not. No teacher would, uh, would disagree with the statement of every child deserves to be safe and learn at school.

Right. But, you know, other races, it's very exclusionary. And so we are trying to forcefully insert teachers voices into a. Yes, everybody needs DEI, but it needs to be more inclusive and so I'll let you guys respond. Jess, what did you wanna say about the DEI mess. Well, you know, I'm in a right to work state and so we don't, we don't have a lot of things that you guys have next door in your state there.

There's not a lot of talk about DEI like when we do trainings and stuff as staff members and it's, it's not talked about a lot, but one thing that I've learned from. Talking about it with you two is that income inequalities are almost never addressed, never mentioned, um, and this, these gigantic income inequalities in America and what it means from school district to school district and what it means even inside of a school.

It, it's never addressed. And it's, it's, it's problem and it's something that, that we're definitely gonna be talking about on our podcast. Thank you, Amanda. Did you wanna add on to the DEI mess. Just that I've, I've learned so much from you, Trina, about how to, uh, support an entire school district, um, to take a more intersectional approach.

And I'm talking about a more, you know, liberal, we're in California school district who, who is talking about DEI? Um, but how to bring a more intersectional approach, uh, through unions. Um, in schools. So, uh, I do hope we record an episode about that. At some point, we will. We're gonna talk about how the unions got started in our district and how painful and hard it was to forcefully create space for all marginalized identities.

Because, you know, my personal experience, 'cause I've. Dumb scholarship on this, but then also I've been involved in DEI work in a number of districts is they sit down and start from the beginning with exclusive foci and they set their, um, aspirations at, and they're very antagonistic against. Looking at what's going on in their district and being, you know, being responsive to what is, what really is the oppression in their district.

They show up with an idea of what the work should look like, and they don't listen to diverse stakeholders. Um, right now I'm reading, uh, white Poverty written by William J. Barber ii. African-American civil rights leader who's led, um, and is really continuing that work and, and it really needs to be an African-American person who does that 'cause as a white person.

'cause I am white. If I'm saying what about white poverty? It sounds wrong. It's cringy and it should be because what he is saying is we have very racist ways of describing poverty in America, which are very. They lack a humanizing approach for ethnic minorities in this country. But then we also leave out the vast majority of poverty in this nation, which are European Americans, white people.

And so it's just one example of a what the harmful prolifics are of exclusionary. DEI work. And what I say is the reason why we have the pushback today is 'cause we started from the wrong place to begin with. We gave everybody ammunition against DEI work when we created this mess. We have today. Moving on, we have a few more themes in, in this giant mess of K 12, you're gonna hear about the special education mess.

I know that's one that's very near and dear to Amanda's heart, but Amanda, what do you want people to know about the special education mess? It's tragic. I, I just, again, I don't believe that teachers, every teacher is a sped teacher. And we're not, we're not equipped. Um, our schools aren't equipped, uh, to handle the needs of these students.

And there's, there's many, many, many undiagnosed students in our classrooms. I think the kids that have IEPs, this, I feel like this is one of the biggest messes of them all, really. I do. I think that, I know it's sad to say, but, um, what, what do you think, Jess, are you gonna talk next about this? This one?

Yeah. It's, it is really challenging as a classroom teacher, your, I don't know about your states, but we are always told, oh, only a certain percentage of students can have an IEP here. And that means a lot of students are not being served. Or they're being ignored or their problems are being brushed under the rug because it looks bad to have a higher percentage than this.

This threshold of students with the I EEPs like, oh, we can't, I was told my first year teaching, we can't have more than 10% of people with an IEP in your room. And that year, I remember I had like. I had like 20 students and I think four were, had an IEP, and I was thinking, well, that's over 10%. But then I'm looking at all the others thinking, uhoh, there's a lot more problems going on in this room.

And they wouldn't even let me, they wouldn't even let me submit. Um, to like the different tiers of intervention is what we call it. Right. They wouldn't even let me submit some of these kids that I was seeing having some issues. And the issues just cover such a broad range. I mean, the, the, the label IEP, individualized education plan and special education, it's just, it's a broad range of needs.

Out there. I don't think people realize how broad it is. It's not just a, a one little category that maybe in the 1950s people thought that it meant intellectual disabilities, but now it just, it's spanning like I. A lot of different, a lot of different illnesses and conditions and circumstances. And so it's, it's difficult.

Well, I think even giftedness, like, you know, uh, that students who are gifted, we assume they're, they're perfect. They are, you know, they need more work. And it's like, I don't know, um, you know, that they could have, um. Identified, you know, disabilities too. Uh, and they, they usually do if they're gifted, they do, they do.

In this theme, we, Amanda and I, um, reveal some things about our family members, and I talk about my son who is gifted, but he also holds, um, what they call twice exceptional. This is another stupid term we use in K 12. Twice exceptional should just mean you have two weird things about you according to K 12.

'cause K 12 teaches to the middle. So a lot of kids don't fit in that category of where you should be in the middle. If you're on either side of whatever of what we consider to be the normative standard, you don't fit. But my kid has. Um, you know, mental health issues and that's another thing we talk about is 'cause we overlook and don't diagnose so many kids.

Like we don't have a dyslexia screener tool. We miss kids who are autistic 'cause their screener tools for that are bogus and what they wind up with is very low and poor mental health outcomes. And so we wonder why there's such a mental health crisis in America today with our youth. And we point to social media, which yeah.

They hold a big piece of the responsibility pie, but so do we. They show up to school, they show us who they are and we continue to ignore it and try to reframe it. And so much about special education is again a dog and pony show of not saying or documenting the things we know are going on and pretending like the stupid goals we've established in the IEP are.

Um, being accomplished, being realized, and just kicking the can until the kid gets done. With public K 12, it's gross and special education teachers are flooded and drowning in stupid paperwork and really understanding what their job is and how it's doomed. They're doomed there. There's no way they can do their jobs well.

How stressful that is. We have a 20 plus year veteran, a dear close personal friend of mine, Manuel Allen, come on and talk about why she quit special education. She's now a gen ed teacher, and so again, I've not, I've never taught special education, but as Amanda said. We are all special education teachers, but Manuel Allen was in a special day class for students who were moderate to severe, and we talk about what those categories are and they are dumb.

That's true. Amanda, do you wanna go first to teacher health mess? I think you have a strong narrative and kind of an announcement you'd like to maybe make. Oh, about the health mask? Um, yeah, I mean, right now I'm wearing a back brace. I've been, um, I mean I think we all have struggled with chronic health, uh, conditions, uh, sort of unexplainable honestly, throughout my teaching career.

And I honestly, I think I can point to one thing and that's stress. Uh, and just being in a constant state of, um, fight or flight, you know, as a classroom teacher and someone who's very sensitive and identifies as neurodivergent, I think that we're at risk for health e even more at risk for health issues.

But, you know, I mentioned Rita Pearson at the beginning of this episode, and she died at 61. She taught for 40 years. I think that's very young. And I, I, I, I think we talked about how, um, this mess, all of these messes are killing us. I I really do think that there's evidence of that. Jess, what do you, what do you wanna, well, I have a podcast away from this one called Healthy Teacher, happy Teacher.

And it's really, I started getting really, really. Sick probably in 2017 or 2018, and that's when I started my podcast, healthy Teacher, happy Teacher, because I was on the quest to see if it was even possible to be healthy and happy in the profession. And those are what all of my episodes are about. Every single one of my podcast episodes is me trying to chase healthiness either.

On a mental level or a physical level level as a teacher and just talking about all these weird things we go through that have an extreme impact on our health. So I will have a lot to say during that, those messes. I forgot my announcement. You told me to say what I'm quitting. This is the third time that I've quit teaching.

I keep going back because I love the kids and I love teaching. I love being in the classroom. Um, but I have to quit. Uh, teaching part-time didn't work, but being a part-time teacher has just really made it very obvious to me that we are, we are taken advantage of and we work way more, um, than we sh than we should because we have to.

You know, and we're not paid for it, and I can't teach anymore because of my chronic health issues and because I can't teach part-time because I'm taken advantage of. You know, I've been teaching part-time for two years and. Really, I'm full-time, but only being paid part-time. Amen. Amen. They take advantage of the fact that we are teach the, the basic personality profile of your typical teacher is dutiful and compliant and loving, um, and hardworking, right?

And so this profession though, will chew you up and spit you out if you're sensitive. If you're a person who's sensitive and noticing things and unable to, unable to resolve the cognitive dissonance that you see, or you know, if you see it and then can't resolve it with a tidy explanation, you're the left with it.

It settles on in somehow some way. All three of us have a narrative for you, Amanda. It's your chronic pain and some of the things that you were. Forced to do, even as a part-time teacher that felt so contrary to what you knew to be right for your kids. For me, it's my mental health. I've been very open and honest about the fact that I've had, um, anxiety disorder throughout my career and that I wrestle with anxiety, um, and all of the physical manifestations of anxiety.

And for Jess, it's a different narrative altogether. Jess. What would you like people to know about what we are gonna be talking about in the teacher health mess? Well, for me personally, my health has just spiraled downhill outta control since becoming a teacher. Some of the, some of the diseases I've gotten are just shocking and scary.

I've had, uh, you know, high blood pressure, diabetes, gout, uh, I've had shingles. Um, I, I can't even go, I can't even go on and on on enough about how, how my physical health has just taken such a downward spiral. It has to be. It has to be the stress because I considered myself a generally healthy person before I became a teacher.

At the age of 30, I didn't have any health problems or issues. And then about four or five years into it, I just it, I started spiraling outta control. Right, and let's be totally upfront and clear. The three of us are in three very different income categories because of our life partners, because this profession has always relied upon male privilege.

Like teacher income is never enough. So that's why they justified paying us a third of a salary as men because they reason that women get married and they can, this is just fun little supplemental income, right? So in my reality, my husband is also a teacher and so we're in one. World where I can't quit.

Um, Amanda has a husband, she has the scenario that this whole system was set up for. She has a husband who is now earning considerably more, and so she's able to supplement and subsidize this thing because of her husband's different job. Whereas Jess, you have a husband who earns less than a teacher's salary, so the three of us are in very different realities.

Um, economically, Jess and I cannot afford to quit, and Amanda, after wrestling with her privilege, I feel bad. I'm quitting 'cause I can't quit. The reality is she has no choice. Like, I really feel like even if she didn't have the privilege of a, of a spouse that could float them financially, she would still have to quit.

She's can barely move. She's sitting here wearing a back brace right now. She would just languish in poverty. I mean, there's no choice to be had here. She has to quit. Amanda. Yeah. I do wonder what my scenario would be if, if I didn't have my husband, um, I'd probably have to move back in with my parents.

That's probably what I would do, so that we're gonna be talking about the teacher health mess, the teacher autonomy mess. We are gonna unpack just because I'm very concerned about the attack on teacher autonomy that is evident with can curriculum. This whole idea that they can mitigate away. The presence of a, of a requisite amount of veteran teachers with CAN curriculum, but I'm now alarmed by the AI involvement in our classrooms.

What I see coming down the line makes it look like, and this is what my husband has said, that we may not, our profession may not exist. In this way in the next 10 to 15 years. Right. So that we can expect that perhaps in-person instruction will be relegated back to what it was before Horace Mann started the system, which is just the elite class and most Americans will get an AI instructor, which is terrible for the human educational system.

So I'll let both of you starting with Amanda. What do you think about, because I know we use a AI as a tool. But I think just like with the internet, I think it's gonna potentially be, be more harmful than beneficial for society. What do you think? I've been trying to use AI and to teach students about ethics and, and how to use it responsibly because it's here and it's not going away.

But, uh, in terms of the teacher autonomy mess, I. Jess and I write curriculum and I really enjoy it. I really, really enjoy creating lessons. It's one of my favorite, most favorite parts. Um, and I do feel like that has been stolen from me. I. Um, especially as an ELD teacher, but also when I was teaching elementary.

Uh, and so it's just, it's just really sad that we're not teach treated like professionals in our own profession. We were, we were, I mean, we learned that that was our teaching certification program. We learned how to write curriculum. That's what we're good at. Like why aren't we allowed to do it? Yeah, that's the one of the biggest problems with education.

It goes hand in hand with the can curriculum mess. A lot of these messes lend themselves to each other, right? A lot of times I. Can curriculum takes the place of what the teacher knows is best for the kids, which would be having autonomy and, you know, knowing, like using our creative skills to create lessons that they're actually going to enjoy.

And that has been, uh, we have, that has been missing from our profession for a long time. And uh, when I went to, I went to New Zealand and toured some schools down there. That was one of the. The central themes of their school was teacher and student autonomy, and they were coming up with the content and lessons, the teachers and the students.

It was wonderful. It was, it was wonderful. And I'll tell you what, they seemed a lot happier than any school I've been around in the United States. This is not rocket science. We know that worker autonomy leads to greater worker satisfaction. Uh, I, I don't know why they continue to do this, especially in places where they have, well, I do know why Profit corporate greed, they figured out they could sell, uh, make a lot of money selling dense curriculums in places where there weren't enough teachers because why districts weren't paying that money.

On their teaching staff. 'cause they didn't have veteran teachers because of our weird way we're paid. They had the extra money, so they spent it on curriculum and so now the curriculum companies are trying to get everyone to buy this cat, this crap. Okay. We are excited, humbled, rejuvenated, and hopeful. We hope you stick with the podcast.

The solution framework is really that we're just hoping to create a national professional organization of teachers to create consistency across the states about our preparation requirements, making sure that we're all getting free education, um, and that we are being paid based on our. Cola our cost of living in a given area and that it's standardized, but we still want micro local control, not to school districts, to teachers in those districts.

That is what we're arguing for. We're asking for teacher leadership positions at the site level, county, state, and federal level where we can be released for part of our time or for years at a time, one to two years to serve. It should be us. The fact that we have to ask for this and explain this over and over again is ridiculous.

But you know what? Anyone who wants to have a conversation with us and doesn't quite understand the petition, come on on. But please don't turn it off. Don't. Disengage and hope that it's gonna get better because it's not. If you are shocked and horrified as to how we're at this conversation of having to defend, even having a US Department of Education in the first place, we can tell you why and really only US teachers.

For the love of God, ask us. We have your answers and we love you, and we wanna fix this mess together.

Thank you for listening. Everyone, please go to rebel teachers rising.com. Do contact us if you would like to be a guest on a future episode and to sign the petition to save K 12 schooling and are precious and fragile. Democracy.