The Decision to Trip

I am an educator, and I think I always have been.  Even when I was a little girl playing make-believe out in the carport or in the yard, I set up desks and gave my friends handouts to complete while I monitored them for accuracy.  It seems I have a knack for teaching, and it always gave me great pleasure.  Well, up until recently.

You see, politicians have embraced the insane idea that a child is measured only by her ability to read some rather

Photo by Alberto G.

boring passages and correctly answer some rather subjective questions presented at the end…all in a specific time frame and under the ever watchful eye of Big Brother.  Public education in my state works very hard to end the creativity, spontaneity, and uniqueness of each individual; rather, it is consumed with the creation of mindless drones (they are much easier to control).

Let me interject right here to make sure you understand that I have met some amazing educators in Florida, who, despite the bureaucratic hierarchy, continue to energize and excite students to become free thinking, highly educated, exceptional adults.

I think I used to be one of them.

Our Department of Education, however, caught on that some teachers weren't "teaching to the test," so they quickly began working to transform the teachers into drones, as well.  It was subtle at first.  The state benchmarks were presented sequentially, clustered into cycles that teachers should follow.  Then my school district created a site presenting actual lesson plans for every single day of the school year.  

As a team player, I allowed myself to be controlled….somewhat….and started doing things their way.  I decided to trust that these "educators" with the big titles might know something I didn't.  After all, I was just a lowly middle school teacher with a BS and they had all kinds of letters at the end of their names.

Still, they had yet to conquer my ability to inject myself into their lessons--my personality, my flair, and my style. And so despite their attempts, I was still a happy teacher.

The DOE was having none of that, so they decided to come up with a new evaluation model, one in which teachers are mandated to include all kinds of charts and scales and methodology into their classrooms.  And while there is nothing inherently wrong with the system and despite the fact that I received an excellent evaluation, I discovered that somewhere along the way I had lost myself.  

It happened one morning this past November while sitting on an uncomfortable seat in the school cafeteria listening to the administration talk about observations (for the umpteenth time) that something snapped in my brain; I realized that teaching no longer made me happy.  

I had become a slave to the wage, to the man, to the system...and I wanted to be free to be me.  I was living someone else's life, not mine.  I wanted to live on my own time-clock, to travel, to see old friends and relatives, and to meet new people from all walks of life.  I simply wanted to experience America.

So after school I told my boss that I was done playing the game, and on the first day back in January, I submitted the official paperwork to take a leave of absence.

And here I am…tripping

julie