Dear Education Decision Makers,

One thing often heard among the hallways and staff lounges in schools, is that those that make decisions in education are often too far removed from where they started to truly make an informed decision. I’m not saying our leaders don’t have a good depth of knowledge, because they absolutely do, but many have truly forgotten what it is like to be in the classroom. My challenge to state leaders is to visit schools and classrooms around their state or even other states for that matter. Visit small schools, large schools, urban schools, rural schools and everything in between. Shadow a teacher for multiple days. Ask the superintendents or principals to let you visit their most difficult classes. Make it clear to the teacher, you aren’t judging him/her, you are only there to see what it is actually like on the “front lines.” Then go back to your cohorts that have hopefully been doing the same “field work” as you, and collaborate and problem solve and propose solutions, solutions that get under the band aid; not ones that add more band aids on top of the problem. I challenge you to form focus groups including current teachers and get to work, the kind of work that leads to change. We have to do better for our students and our teachers.

Sincerely,

A Passionate Teacher