Who would even want to be a teacher these days? It seems like more and more, we're telling them how to do their jobs. Everyone seems to know what is best for children, except, apparently, the people who dedicate their lives to teaching the next generation.
Certain states are terrified of particular subject matter being taught in schools. So much so that if a child even asks about those subjects, the teacher is not allowed to offer any type of support within the school systems.
In this instance, I am talking about a bill that's been called "Don't say Gay," out of Florida. There've been similar ones across the U.S. What most of these bills do is remove teachers’ ability to work with the school or with a potential counselor to act as a legally-allowed lifeline for a student asking about any of these prohibited topics. Any conversation about gender identity or sexuality must get the parent or guardian involved.
Meaning, if a student comes to a teacher and wants to keep the conversation away from the parent, and have it be just the two of them, it has to be off-the-record and unofficial. That's the way I see it, this by-the-book approach eliminates the human element. It means no additional staff can be informed. No records, no forms — unless they also want to risk being sued and losing their job. Or are willing to leave the kid hanging.
Great idea! Push the kid away. Just tell them to talk to their parents about that.
There should be a procedure for such a thing so it's not put entirely on one person to either break the law or push the situation away. We need accountability, so yes, there should be forms and confidentiality agreements for the student. Let the teacher get other staff involved. Keep the parent out of it if the student feels they are safer that way.
The alternative is, we sue a school district if they violate this. Great opportunity to bankrupt a school. More likely, a district would simply throw the teacher under the bus.
Maybe not literally, but who knows?
There is a stipulation in most of the bills being introduced and passed across the country that if the student seems in fear of danger back at home — or even fears abandonment — the teacher and school can keep this information confidential.
Great. Woo-hoo.
Now, if you're a teacher and a student comes to you and wants to talk to you about this, you have to assess whether they're just regularly concerned about their sexuality or are in fear of neglect from their parents. Teachers need to be trained child psychologists, or mind-readers, with no support from the school.
There is more we want out of teachers, too. With the constant violence at schools another questionable suggestion keeps arising. Give the teachers guns. Really?
We won't even give teachers our trust, yet we want to give them guns? How does that make any sense?
We're not doing anything on these fronts to make the job any easier for teachers. Nothing ever changes there. How many school shootings have there been? Or mass-shootings. Can we help stop those? One thing that is effective would be down-playing them in media and not sensationalizing them. And yes, I realize that by even mentioning them here, I do contribute to that. But the large amount of noise created on social media when these events take place, at least once a day now, surely dwarfs anything I have to say about it.
And since I’ve already stepped into this mess, let me continue by saying that I've seen how people want armed officers in schools. In some places, there already are School Resource Officers. It’s hard to know how many school shootings such folks prevented by existing. There’s the very simple, "Correlation Does Not Imply Causation" principal.
Or is that principle?
Hey, who needs education when you can just look like an idiot on purpose.
We do know that SRO officers have definitely caused problems on some campuses — killing a mother, not being on duty when needed, even dying themselves on occasion when an incident does occur. It makes sense. We've definitely seen security guards and off-duty officers die in these shootings. And in spite of that, the big idea now is that to effectively protect a school from a gunman assaulting it, we should be arming the teachers, to put into every classroom a trained, fully-armed protector who can do more than just lock a door. We certainly can't have conversation about any other solutions, because we can't punish good responsible gun owners. We can however punish teachers, as we fire them, sue them, scrutinize them and blame them for pretty much anything we can think of. Smart plan, because if there's anything thing that is putting our kids in danger, it is most certainly teachers.
So who in their right mind is going to want to be a teacher now?
Not only do they have to do their jobs as educators, they also have to somehow avoid being any kind of moral or emotional support to their students, must instantly become a child psychology expert (or a mind-reading mentalist of some sort), plus they'll need firearms training, and they’ll also probably need some form of legal knowledge when they ultimately suffer the wrath of parents, politicians, gun-toting picketers when they are accused of failing at any of these things and are unceremoniously kicked out of their career.
It's okay, though. Most of those teachers were probably only in it for the money, anyway.
Oliver Graves is a stand-up comic and award-winning newspaper columnist. “Oliver’s World” runs the first and third Fridays of the month in the Argus-Courier. You can find out more about Oliver at OliverGraves.com or on the Facebook page Oliver Graves.
The Link LonkJune 16, 2022 at 09:34AM
https://www.petaluma360.com/article/entertainment/olivers-world-a-hard-job-is-quickly-becoming-impossible/
A hard job is quickly becoming impossible, says local columnist - Petaluma Argus Courier
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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