A new corporate idea being revved up for public schools involves teachers earning badges…because there is nothing that says Free Market more than teachers competing with Girl Scouts.
Here are some badges you can earn, teachers:
Money Counts. Teachers, earn this badge when you spend 50% of your paycheck on materials that the school cannot afford to buy.
Earn the arts badge by blending all your subjects with crayons and paints since the school let go of the real art teacher.
Congrats! You Raced to the Top faster than the teacher at the school down the street, in the next county, and over there in Georgia. You won! You ran the fastest! You beat them all out so our school gets lots of money for more reform. You get the badge!
Omm. You show you are able to transcend to a better place while teaching Universal Design for Learning and the Common Core State Standards. You teach 40 students with a variety of educational and emotional needs. The key to this badge is that you never quit smiling…and you never blink.
This is for having all your students plugged into computers. Unfortunately, even though you get the badge, we are letting you go.
This is for reading The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer with your kindergarten class.
The Girl Scouts had a lot of these badges left over. So they gave them to the school districts. Freebies! One for each teacher. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!
We realize there is no more recess or P.E. and that you manage to keep your students physically fit anyway.
You take care of the health care needs of your students since there are no more school nurses.
This is the badge you get for teaching Common Core State Standards and telling everyone that it is the best program ever.
This is the badge you get for teaching the weird Common Core math and getting parents to quit complaining about it.
This badge is for the teacher who overcomes the “Somewhere Over the Rainbow Syndrome” where you dream there is a better public school system elsewhere.
This badge is for the teacher who keeps all those cranky Opt Out parents out of their business and manages to test their children anyway.
Despite not having science labs or time to teach science, you get this honorable badge for us hearing how often you say “the importance of STEM learning” outside of the classroom. And you didn’t think we were watching.
You epitomize the teacher who never questions administrators or politicians on the actions they take in your school. You have never seen a scripted program or a draconian behavioral plan that you didn’t like.
This is a serious badge that shows how much you helped us turn public schools into a business. Our stakeholders, oops, we mean parents, are very proud.
You finally understand that everything is in black and white. There are only winners or losers. You either read or you don’t. You get high scores on the test or you fail. There are no differences. You are happy or you are sad.
This badge needs no explanation.
This is earned by the teacher/s who are displaced from their classrooms by charter school invasions. Special education included.
This is a floating badge for whichever teacher has the most badges per week. We like to keep generating excitement.
And this is for the teacher who resists all other badges because they remember why they became teachers in the first place.
Sadly, spot on.
I agree very much. Thank you, Andrea.
This is fabulous. Thanks for pointing out the ridiculousness of the “badge” system for educators.
Thank you, Jennifer. Leave it to Nashville.
You are Brilliant Nancy!.. Speaking of the badges points out EVERYTHING wrong and horrifying about what is going on with CC, and the breakdown and destruction of Public school… Every parent and teacher should read this, for it is the most succinct and illustrative writing example to explain what the federal government and Big business has done to education today….
Thank you, Kara. It is hard to understand.
I heard that schools in Nashville, TN were going to offer teachers badges for PD that we completed on our own time. I can’t remember when I heard this, but believe me, it was shot down. Don’t know if they’re going to try and pull this on us again. We don’t want badges! We want to be paid like any other professional. Evidently this summer, teachers did not attend workshops/PD they signed up for. Attendance was low. Guess why? No stipend. I was told to attend a workshop from 8 – 3:30 for 3 days. It was necessary in order to teach my remedial reading class. No stipend was listed when I signed up. I emailed the correct person to ask about this and told her that I did not want for free for 3 days! Evidently other people didn’t either. Somehow the money materialized and we were paid.
Good for you, Susan! You have great insight for Nashville’s schools and the teachers there!