Republican Teachers?

            As I sit here the night before a new school year begins I had another friend who is both a woman and a teacher "like" Mitt Romney on Facebook. Now I truly support everyone's right to support and vote for whoever they want. The fact that she is a woman supporting this particular team of republicans surprises me a little because they seem pretty conservative as far as women's rights go but I know that there are more issues at stake than just women rights. The fact that all of these people are teachers supporting republicans surprises me even a little more, because we have seen republican after republican this year attack schools and public education both verbally and by cutting funding.
      Here is what surprises me the most. Most of these facebook firends who are showing their support for Mitt Romney and the Republican Party are people that I have known to be BIG supporters of our teachers' Union. I was actually sitting next to two teachers the other day who were discussing how awesome Romney is and how horrible Obama is and I swear to you at least three times in that discussion they brought up something about how they wanted the Union to fix this or to take care of that. WHAT?! How can you support the republican party that strongly and still lean so heavily on the union. The same union that republicans are trying with every fiber of their being to tear apart.
   To be honest , I am neither a full democrat nor a full republican though I do lean toward a democrat on most issues. Eventhough I am closer to a democrat I also am not a person who uses the union everytime someone asks me to work a little harder or use up ten minutes of my lunch hour, becuase I am first and foremost there for the kids. Which is why I just cannot even begin to understand the hipocracy of these teachers who are HUGE union "users" I will call them users, because they use the union for EVERYTHING that they don't like about their job! Yet these people are voting against their own interests! Which begs the question. Are they even paying attnention to what the republican party stands for? Or are they just people who have always followed the republican party and therefore have stopped thinking for themselves , because the simple fact is that if you are a teacher the Republican party is NOT on your side! The republican party again and again wants to "raise standards" and at the same time they cut funding. Where is the common sense in that? If you are a teacher, how do you support that kind of thinking?
   Like I said, I am not married to the democratic party and if the right republican candidate came along, I would vote for them. It just surprises me that a woman, who is a teacher and an active union memeber would even think of voting for a candidate who seems to be anti-all of the above!

Why I'm Here

Hi Everyone,

For over a year now I have been saying that I want to or actually feel the NEED to start a blog. As a professional educator for over 11 years now I feel that it is time that I have a place to set some records straight. There are far too many people out there who have never set foot in a classroom who seem to think they are all experts on the topic of education. Why is that? Do you think it is because everyone has been a student at one time or another so they feel like they know what makes a good school or a good teacher? I can for the most part ignore the people out there that hate teachers and schools because they are mostly just repeating what they hear from media outlets or politicians. For me it is the politicians that are the worst offenders, because they actually have the power to affect education either positvely or negatively and for the most part they have a negative affect, because the fact is that the most experience any of them have in education is as a student. They have never taken a class in education, they have never set foot in a K-12 classroom since they graduated and yet they all feel like they have enough knowledge to create laws and set new demands on teachers.

So here I am. I am going to share just about any thought I have on education on this blog. Some will be positive, some will be in response to politics and some will just be my opinion on politics in general. Maybe someone will read this blog and maybe nobody will. I really am just doing this for me. If in the process I can teach people something or open someone's eyes to what it really is like to be teacher, then great! Mostly though, this will be my place to vent...to say the things that I want to say to so many people and politicians out there that I never get the chance to say so that I can go into my classroom every day with a clear conscience and I can give my students my full attention.