Kam Rigney is a middle school Special Education teacher who works with students with profound cognitive disabilities. She teaches six different subject areas, across three grade levels, in a self-contained classroom. Kam believes that all voices matter, and all students deserve the opportunity to show how amazing they are, on their own individual level. Kam facilitates District Wide Trainings for her peers within Pinellas county and has been acknowledged as a teacher expert. Kam is the Vice President for the PTSA, the Secretary for SAC, and she is certified as a Best Practice For Inclusion facilitator. She is also a new teacher mentor and a Lead Union Representative at her school. She received her B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies PreK-8, a M.S. in Special Education K-12, and a M.A. in English Language Learners K-12 from Western Governors University.
We are experts in our field…
Anyone else feel like a team of supervisors that supervise another set of supervisors are diminishing our expertise?
I became a teacher for the purest reasons. I wanted to impact students the way I was by some awesome teachers /coaches…
I am definitely working in a population that I was never a part of growing up, let alone even saw when I went to school…
Oh how times have changed.
I am really good at what I do, many of us are!
It shouldn’t be this hard.
I shouldn’t hear so many teachers are ready to leave this profession.
I shouldn’t have to question my ability to do what I do by someone who has never done my job or has openly said “I don’t want to do your job”.
Don’t give me test scores.
Don’t shove down my throat what gains are needed to improve a school score.
Walk in my room and see what they can do!
Ask me, let me show you the data, I’ll show you how far they’ve come.
See the social skills they’ve gained.
See the amazing ways they’ve progressed.
Ask their parents to sit down and tell you the difference a year, or two, or three in my classroom has made.
Don’t give me a number, because I teach incredible humans, not a statistic!
Just a thought from a tired teacher.
This lament by Kam caught my eye the other day in Florida Teachers Unite! on Facebook. Always on the lookout for guest posts, so if you believe you’d make a good contributor or know someone else who may want to write a guest post, please send an email to 1teachervoice@gmail.com. Thanks!
P.S. – Still haven’t signed/shared the petition? https://Change.org/SupportFloridaEducators
Teacher Voice 
This introduction is pulled from the book “Traching Literacy in the visible Learning Classroom.” While meant for teachers to understand students I think it applies equally to the powers-that-be understanding teachers.
Kierkegaard stated as follows:
If we wish to succeed in helping someone to reach a particular goal we must first find out where he is now and start from there.
If we cannot do this, we merely delude ourselves into believing that we can help others.
Before we can help someone, we must know more than he does, but most of all, we must understand what he understands. If we cannot do that, our knowing more will not help.
If we nonetheless wish to show how much we know, it is only because we are vain and arrogant, and our true goal is to be admired, not to help others.
All genuine helpfulness starts with humility before those we wish to help, so we must understand that helping is not a wish to dominate but a wish to serve.
If we cannot do this, neither can we help anyone.
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