If you are hired as a new teacher after 2020 is over, you will not have something that teachers hired before 2021 have: retiree health benefits. A report today in the News & Observer explains that the budget set forth in 2017's long session of the NCGA did away with retiree health benefits for hires … Continue reading Happy New Year To All New Teachers From Your 2017 NC General Assembly

I am the proud parent of  two children. One is a highly intelligent and academically driven young lady who looks like her mother. The other one is what some in the educational field might call “special.” He looks like his mother as well. Specifically, that child has Down Syndrome and is on the autism spectrum … Continue reading What My Special Needs Child With The Really Big IEP Has Taught And Retaught Me As A Teacher In This Pandemic

“If you’ve been a school teacher for years, you have the immune system of steel because just like healthcare workers, you are around children all day long who aren’t the best at covering their mouth or nose when they sneeze or cough,” Morrow said. “They’re not good at washing their hands after they go to … Continue reading That “Immune System Of Steel” Did Not Prevent This Teacher From Getting COVID-19

Last April 30th State Superintendent Mark Johnson announced the following: I remember asking, "WHERE ARE THE TEACHERS?" McKinney was a teacher until a couple of years ago. Jeffery Elmore is a teacher, but has spent more time in Raleigh supporting his party’s stalling a budget process and keeping Medicaid from being extended while using teachers as political … Continue reading Remembering Mark Johnson’s Schools Reopening Task Force

When a former student sends you a kind email years after he has left your classroom and graduated, When you receive wedding invitations from former students, When you are sent a Christmas Card from the family of a former student, When a former student walks into your classroom just to watch how you still teach, … Continue reading The Greatest Gifts A Teacher Could Ever Receive

Dear Santa, With gerrymandered districts and continued emphasis on using public taxpayer money to finance unproven reform efforts that do more to privatize and divide our student bodies, I thought it might be worth adding a few items to my holiday wish list. Sure, I want efforts to clean our environment and hold entities accountable … Continue reading This North Carolina Teacher’s Letter to Santa

Since we are in the heart of the holiday season, I tend to think of this part of Dickens’s classic holiday novella. “At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and … Continue reading “Pro-Life” Means Taking Care Of Those Who Are Already Born

This blog has highlighted SAS and its use of the EVAAS system to measure teacher effectiveness.  And every time this teacher thinks of EVAAS, he thinks of a presentation by James Ford in October of 2017. Ford delivered the keynote address at that time to the North Carolina English Teacher’s Association. It was more than … Continue reading Let’s Go Ahead And Get Rid Of EVAAS. It Can’t Measure What Teachers Are Really Doing For Students Now.

When the GOP won control of both houses in the North Carolina General Assembly in the elections of 2010, it was the first time that the Republicans had that sort of power since 1896. Add to that the election of Pat McCrory as governor in 2012, and the GOP has been able to run through … Continue reading A Decade Of Dismantling Public Education In North Carolina – Twenty-Three Egregious Attacks By The NCGA From 2011-2020

...the that leadership within Central Office and the School Board will genuinely listen to our teachers, students, and parents during the search and hiring process. Yes, in the middle of the school year amidst the most unprecedented time in any teaching career, my school is losing a principal to open another school. Having taught for … Continue reading My School Needs A New Principal And I Hope…