I would honestly like to get into a cage match with every First Lady who has backed "No Child Left Behind" and other educational programs of the like. I am sick and tired, up to my elbows, and fed up every other metaphorical way I possibly can be with this educational system. One year and one month is all it has taken for this girl to see what a corrupt, self-serving, greedy, ignorant educational system we have. The processes, the methods, the ways and means, are, simply put, wrong. Children will always rise to our expectations, and our expectations are alarmingly low. They are being taught be English teachers with no English degrees, who have never read Shakespeare or Twain and cannot tell you the difference between good and well. The state, the government, wants the educators to indoctrinate kids on procedural literature and expository texts, but leave out the Hawthorne and Melville. I cannot and will not stand for that. Recently, I was severely chided when I "broke district policy" and required my students to read on their own individual level. Levels were determined by a well respected reading program that was both vocabulary and sentence complexity based. I didn't feel as if I was one to argue with the test, rather my job was to assure that the kids were pushing themselves instead of reading "Twilight" for the 22nd time. When the Language Arts TEKS change at the end of this year, students will be lucky to have read 4 novels by the time they get to 12th grade. Apparently, incompetency is the new trend in hiring. I want so badly for my students to read the classics, not only in order to pass the AP test but to be well rounded students who are prepared for college and life in general. It is a proven fact that frequent reading raises intelligence and builds neurons; reading physically makes your brain able to react faster and more effectively. Why are we shunning this so much? I am but one measly teacher; I cannot take on the state or the government and change educational laws. My option, if I wish to keep earning a paycheck, is to sit back, change my policies, lower my expectations, and keep my mouth shut. It's a bit like laying down and trying to hold your neck off the ground for an entire week-painful and damn near impossible. My expectations are high and it is my intent to push kids out of their comfort zone every day. If they are always sliding by, they will never learn anything. Maybe this is an issue that begins at home; too many kids are sqeaking by and not being held accountable for their actions and reactions. If I had shirked a responsibility growing up, there were serious and immediate consequences. I was taught to hold myself accountable for not only the things expected of me, but more importantly my own expectations. Maybe I should be ranting to parents who can't take the time to sit down with their kids and teach them how to be adults; maybe I should be talking to parents who believe that every experience a child should have must be positive. I would suggest to those parents to go buy a "Calvin and Hobbes" comic and promptly ask your child to do some hard labor; I imagine it would help.

I am but one measly teacher, but my love for my kids and investment in their future is not now, nor has it even been anything but tremendous. I want the best for those kids, and I give my heart every day making sure that's what I'm doing. I am being cut off at the knees, my efforts thwarted by elitist parents and the drones that work higher than me. It's suffocating and I don't know how much more air I will be able to gulp on my way down.