Below is a simple template email that you can copy, paste, and send to your principal. Feel free to make any necessary edits, but try to keep the email short and direct. Though they may not remain when copied and pasted, I have linked a few key pieces of information. Please see below the email for additional details or to download the Word Doc version of this email.
Dear Principal ______________,
I hope this brief message finds you and your family well during this unprecedented time. I cannot begin to imagine what has been asked of you by our district. Planning and scheduling two different options within one week must be an impossible task.
Due to the current CDC guidelines meeting the criteria for a high transmission area, I will be attending work remotely beginning tomorrow, (enter date). I am concerned for my health, as well as that of my family, neighbors, and the broader public. I hope you understand and respect this decision.
Governor Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran have both made assurances that educators who do not feel comfortable returning to the brick and mortar setting can engage in distance learning. I have made my request for an eLearning position, yet have not received confirmation. If you can confirm that I have received an eLearning position, please let me know at your earliest convenience; if you cannot confirm at this time, I will await my appointment. In the meantime, I will continue my own learning through professional development, focusing specifically on our new platforms to serve our students online.
I look forward to when the virus subsides and it is safe for all to return to our school.
Gratefully,
___________________________
P.S. – Feel free to edit how you see fit for your district.
P.P.S. – Here are a few key excerpts from the CDC guidelines regarding why our schools should remain closed until our COVID rates decline. Many continue to simply say “the CDC said…” yet have not read the specifics in the updated guidelines.
Another excellent guest post from friend, fellow teacher, and contributor, Michelle Hamlyn.
For the entire fifteen years I’ve lived and taught in Florida, it seems the Florida Legislature has had it in for teachers. Teachers have dealt with tenure disappearing, increased standardized testing, and new evaluation systems. We’ve lived through multiple performance pay shenanigans, including the asinine Best & Bogus, arbitrary and continually moving cut scores, and constant disrespect. We’ve watched as shady charters use funding traditional public schools desperately need, only to close amid scandal after scandal. We’ve seen voucher misuse and abuse, to the detriment of some of our neediest kids.
And we’re still here.
Because we’re actually pretty good at waiting. (After all, we’re the people who sometimes have to wait all day to use the bathroom.) We wait for our students to think before they raise their hand to answer a question. We wait for the “light bulb” moments. We wait for the college acceptance letters with our high school students. We know human growth takes time.
Those of us veteran teachers who have been around for a while also know that in education, there are cycles and arcs. We know the pendulum eventually swings back in the opposite direction. So we’ve become pretty good at waiting.
All of this is lost on the Florida Legislature. They believed that if they could just prove the narrative that public education is failing, it would be quick and easy to privatize education. And then the money would roll in for them and their cronies. Unfortunately for them, they underestimated teachers’ “wait time” abilities. Grossly underestimated them.
Because no matter how many times they’ve changed the cut scores or the iteration of the standards or the version of the test, most of us have stayed. And taught our students how to play the game. Yes, you were taught to start your essay with a question, but this year you can’t start with a question. Absolutely, you’ll get a reference sheet with formulae on it. Sorry, you’re going to have to memorize the formulae this year. It’s enough to make a person’s head spin, but we’ve persevered.
As have our students.
So now they’ve come out with what is truly ridiculous. The new standardized test administration rules. These rules should have every public school parent in the state calling or emailing their legislators . Because the rules are even more asinine than a bonus based on a test the teacher took when they were seventeen. Make no mistake, the legislature will tell you it’s in the interest of fairness and a level playing field. As if they know what one looks like.
The new test administration rules forbid the following:
Waking a sleeping child.
Verbally encouraging a student.
Telling a student to go back and check their answers.
Asking the students if they’re sure they’re done or if they’ve answered every question before submitting the test.
Reminding students to write down (before the test begins) a formula or mnemonic device that will help them remember something.
Giving out mints or water.
There is absolutely nothing about any of these things that is truly in the interest of fairness. Seriously, telling a student, “It’s okay, you got this” is unfair? Letting them get a drink of water during a two-hour window of sitting in front of a computer makes a student infinitely smarter than “little Jimmy?” What’s next? Telling them they can’t use the bathroom during that two-hour window?
Most of the teachers I’ve communicated with that know of these new rules are beyond flabbergasted. Some are disheartened; some are rebellious. But all are shaking their heads in complete and total disgust. Because we know that this is just one more ploy in a long-standing ruse that just isn’t ever going to be true.
And in the meantime, our kids are paying the price.
Want to help? This petition recently started circulating online, demanding that the FLDOE reconsider these new “rules” that have been issued to educators who will work as testing proctors this spring.Please CLICK HERE to sign and share with others today!
FLFIRE – Florida’s Fully Inclusive Rebellion for Education
Education should not be political. But for the last two decades in Florida, it has been.
As a democratic society and the collective stewards of the generations that follow in our wake, we realize that a balanced, high quality education that prepares a student for life is what we all desire. Tallahassee, however, has made this next to impossible for a variety of reasons, from the chronic underfunding of the last decade to the overtesting of our children. Parents and educators alike feel helpless in the face of a constant legislative onslaught that breeds bad ideas, foists unfunded mandates upon local districts, and routinely ignores the concerns or expertise of either group that works with our students each and every day.
Even worse, our students are suffering. Whether the chronic stress of being constantly assessed or the demeaning way in which they are reduced to a single metric, our children are being dehumanized for the purpose of data collection. Furthermore, they are terrorized by all-too-frequent shooter drills that keep them anxious and on high alert, even when not crouching in the complete dark trying to remain motionless and breathe silently. Most students openly share these frustrations with caring adults in schools who also feel powerless. Ultimately, we are trapped in a system that has become inhumane. Is this what education has become in the 21st century?
Our children deserve much better than this. Now is the time to take a stand.
You are receiving this letter today because we are asking all of you to make a basic choice: Will you stand with teachers or Tallahassee? Will you side with parents or privatizers? Will you choose students or suffering?
To have a $1 trillion dollar economy yet rank 45th in public education spending is deeply shameful. The destabilization these draconian budgets have brought must be decried by us all. The lack of resources is felt at every turn, from providing wraparound services to our most vulnerable children and their communities, to paying all educators a wage that allows them to fully support their families without additional stress or jobs. But how do we accomplish this?
FLFIRE is a grassroots coalition comprised of concerned stakeholders seeking to send a message to the Florida Legislature that puts people over politics, educators over entrenchment. We need to radically reshape our education system to make it more inclusive and humane for every person involved, beginning with the student and buttressed by every caring adult who works alongside the child. By issuing this resolution your school district can demonstrate solidarity with citizens all across the Sunshine State who currently support this growing movement. Our students and their future require a robust and on-going investment to provide the necessary resources for an education that truly befits the whole child and allows her or him to flourish as a lifelong learner.
And since then the numbers have only gotten worse. The average teacher pay in Florida, for example, when taking the entire U.S. into account (including D.C.), is now 48th.
Funding? According to Diane Rado’s most recent article in the Florida Phoenix News, Florida ranks 45th.
TL;DR? Funding affects outcomes. Period.
How much worse can and will it get before there is an all out uprising?
Why are educators so afraid to stand up for themselves?
How can people be so afraid when school districts all around the Sunshine State are begging people to become teachers while the already massive teacher shortage continues to worsen?
How much abuse and disrespect will educators endure before they unequivocally state that enough is enough?
The fear of speaking out mystifies and perplexes me.
People on social media have told me to pipe down. That I should not be encouraging others to take a personal day. Well guess what? It’s a personal day that I can take off any time I want and will do dang well what I please with it, whether that is make the drive to Tallahassee and protest the outrageous treatment of our students and our profession or just sit around my house all day reading books. Regardless of what I choose to do in either of those scenarios I would certainly enjoy my time…but I have a funny feeling the former option would be far more productive use of said time on January 14th, 2020.
Some claim that I am being reckless in that I have not reviewed the penalties for joining in on a strike in Florida, and if you’d like to read the statutes yourself the two main chapters are 447 and 775. Even if this were “construed” as a strike–which I will argue all day long that it is NOT–it is a second degree misdemeanor and up to a $500 fine. As a highly decorated professional with a long track record of success, as well as an army of former students who would surely cry out at the injustice of such a lunatic play on the part of the district or state, I think I would be willing to take that fight any day. I can only imagine the Florida newspaper headlines if teachers start getting arrested for standing up and speaking out for their students and profession, and in the midst of terrible teacher shortage that worsens each year no less.
Never one to leave anything to chance, I decided to ask the Florida Commissioner of Education himself. I will update everyone if and when there is ever a reply.
Over/under on the number of days to respond?
For now, though, here are two simple options:
Take a personal day on 1/14/20. Do with it what you will, but for my part I’ll likely be in Tallahassee, hopefully on the steps to greet the legislators as they begin the first day of the new session. Whether I am a lone man or one of many thousands matters not to me, but I ardently hope I am not alone.
If you cannot risk taking a personal day for whatever reason, then at least join in on the post-work demonstrations that will take place locally all across Florida. If you haven’t heard of Reconstruct-ED: A Message to Governor DeSantis, it is a public group on Facebook replete with concerned stakeholders from all across Florida. Thousands of taxpayers, parents, educators, and public education advocates are planning marches with local leadership teams, and if you haven’t connected with yours, please reach out to them to find out who is helping your county.
Hope to see a massive turnout that turns major media attention toward Tallahassee, because a long overdue conversation with actual classroom teachers is just what our legislators clearly need!
This is my most recent set of comments delivered to the HCPS School Board. Make no mistake, it is a lament about our test-and-punish culture that is destroying creativity and initiative in its wake, leaving many students dissatisfied with their education and experiences related to it. As noted previously, “the kids who succeed do so despite the system–not because of it.”
And the greatest sacrifice laid on the altar of lobbying interests in this entire travesty that has become our public education system here in Florida?
A love of lifelong learning for far too many children…
The overuse of standardized tests to generate the almighty data for the false god of accountability has virtually destroyed an entire generation’s innate curiosity. As so eloquently stated among innumerable ways throughout her acerbic piece, writer Anastasia Basil recognizes the urgent need to revolutionize and reconfigure our entire educational enterprise when she bluntly states, “The time for radical change was yesterday. (You’re late. Here’s a tardy slip.)”
What is happening to education now also happened to what once used to be another non-profit/public good in the past: medicine. Much of the privatization began in the 1970s and now we have created a system that equates to roughly 20% of our entire nation’s GDP. The public education sector started trickling down this revenue stream in the 1990s, and now it seems like the Education Industrial Complex, led by Pearson first and foremost, is an unstoppable waterfall that will pummel every aspect of education until it is completely commodified and monetized.
Tests are a natural part of education as formal assessments used occasionally by classroom teachers–the actual experts in the room working with children that lobbyists and think tanks continue to micromanage with campaign contributions. But all of the ridiculous state level tests that students must endure–as well as the nearly constant “progress monitoring” at the earliest ages–is creating a toxic environment that is riddled with chronic stress on every human being involved, most especially our children.
Take my high school as an example. We began testing on May 1st as decreed by law and it was a logistical nightmare. From 5/1 through 5/23 our school was administering some sort of standardized test every. single. day. Students had to take the FSA, EOCs (End of Course exams for graduation requirements such as Biology and Algebra I), AP exams, or IB exams. Most students end up testing for consecutive days, especially ESE students with accommodations for additional time. Many IB students took multiple exams on multiple days due to the scheduling conflicts and, in some cases, even took makeup AP exams after graduation. Furthermore, the scheduling was compounded by the lack of computers in the school, which had numerous teachers and students having to move to alternative classrooms so that the computer lab or media center could be taken over for testing.
Beyond the logistics–and far more critical–is how much all the testing truly stresses out students. For the Sunshine State to claim that it cares about the mental health and well-being of its children on the one hand, it makes for a comically absurd paradox that Florida’s reliance on standardized tests crushes the creative spirit of many children while simultaneously heaping undue stress and anxiety upon them on the hand. Our students need love, attention, and encouragement; they need to feel cared for and nurtured by the adults in their school house. What they don’t need to is to be told they’re inadequate by being reduced to a number…
Who needs creative and critical thinking when you can speak bubble sheet?
The reductionist view of seeing kids as merely data to be mined is deplorable and demeaning. While this might not necessarily be the intention, it certainly leaves many of them feeling dehumanized if nothing else. In virtually every aspect of the testing regime that begins May 1st, kids must know their student number, the school code, the testing site digits, and on and on.
Worse than this, the focus on the almighty tests that determine the fate of would-be graduates all but eradicates any true desire to learn for its own sake. In the last decade or so, the students who have survived the test-and-punish model leave in one of two states: roughly the bottom half leave with a false sense of confidence due to inflated district and state exams, while the top half walk away knowing how to “pump and dump” as the kids call it: memorizing facts to regurgitate on some test, all so that they can get an easy A.
And regardless of the half, all of them are glad that it is over.
Education has become so transactional and formulaic: Memorize stuff. Spit it out on a test. Get the grade needed to move on. Repeat. There has to be a better way, and it begins by lessening the focus on testing. Two main suggestions:
– Reduce or eliminate as many tests as possible, preferably all of the FSAs and EOCs; instead, rather than using it as an alternative graduation requirement, allow an SAT or ACT baseline concordance score in its place. The state already has every student taking the SAT, so perhaps the adversity index could even be used in the mix. Currently, there are several states in the U.S. that solely use concordance scores in lieu of any state test, and this would provide a better gauge to compare Florida’s students against the rest of the U.S. on a norm-referenced test rather than criterion-based and otherwise meaningless exams with opaque sliding scales that tell us nothing useful.
– If the tests must stay, return to paper testing for all exams. It may be more expensive, but it saves time to administer the tests all in a single day in any given classroom rather than the few available computer labs or the school’s lone media center. If the school is even fortunate enough to have a full time teacher-librarian, he or she should be opening new vistas for children, not watching them get the joy of learning sucked out of them like the Pod People in The Dark Crystal.
A child’s innate capacity for curiosity and wonder being drained away by i-Ready
Commissioner Corcoran and the Florida Board of Education claim to want the very best for our children and their education. What parent or teacher would not want the very best education for their child so that he or she may continue to be lifelong learners with a passion for constantly getting better as human being while living as well as possible? Should that not be our aim? To help recognize, encourage, guide, and nurture the potential and passion within every child? The educators working with kids in classrooms all over this state certainly want this for their students–and do their best to provide them despite the current barriers–why not take away all these tests and stressors so that we can flourish together?
Because if we don’t, the more we double down on this failed test and punish “accountability” scheme, the more the state of Florida–and by extension the entire United States–will get results like this…
About a week ago, ABC Action News caught up with the Florida Department of Education’s Commissioner, Pam Stewart. The reporter in the video had been trying to get an official comment regarding the on-going saga of teachers who are losing their jobs due to not being able to pass one of Florida’s teacher certification exams.
Bear in mind, however, that many of these teachers have already demonstrated their skills in the field, had been rated “Effective” or better, had developed a rapport with the students they serve…yet were let go nonetheless.
This truly is “must see television”:
To provide some context, ABC Action News has been investigating this issue for about a year and a half, starting in March 2017. They had updates to this story in July of that same year, May 2018, again this past July, and culminating in this report from last week.
The shortest version possible of what has happened is this: in 2015 Pearson debuted new tests and pass rates quickly plummeted. Many teachers discuss their struggles with the mathematics portion of the General Knowledge Test, despite the majority of these teachers not even teaching math. Ever.
The one year I worked as a new teacher mentor coincided with the new, more challenging tests, and it was almost always the General Knowledge Test that was holding back first and second year teachers. One of my mentees, for instance, couldn’t pass the essay portion of the GK. She hailed from Puerto Rico, taught Spanish, was adored by her students, yet had to pass a meaningless portion of a test that had no real bearing on her ability to teach Spanish.
Compounding this problem is the statewide (national, really) teacher shortage. More and more “new” teachers are people who are making the transition to a new career, not a young person entering the profession from college. If someone hasn’t used their math skills in 10 or more years, they will have eroded significantly.
And, again, if a person is hired to be an art (or any subject not related to math) teacher, should she need to be able to do the following?
In the midst of a teacher shortage crisis, one would hope that the state would offer some temporary reprieve on some of the testing requirements, especially the General Knowledge Test that seems to be the biggest barrier to staying in the profession. What’s more curious is that Florida does this to no other profession. No one who is going to take the bar exam to be a lawyer has to also take this test. It seems logical that if a person can earn an undergraduate degree such as a B.A. or B.S., s/he has the basic skills necessary to work in any professional domain.
Eliminating the GK test would not necessarily mean it is easier to become a teacher. A person still would have to pass the Florida Teacher Certification Examination and a Subject Area exam, and rightly so. A candidate should be able to know and understand the laws that govern the profession, the ethical obligations they hold as teachers, and demonstrate mastery in the content the educator will teach to students.
But having to prove you went to college 10 or 20 years after the fact by taking and passing the “General Knowledge” test? Absurd.
(Sweet Incredible Hulk GIF that wouldn’t embed. You know you want to click the link.)
Other questions arise with this approach as well:
When these teachers who have already been deemed effective during their first few years lose their jobs, who replaces them? Who will connect with those students? A long-term substitute? Pam Stewart realizes that teachers aren’t growing on trees, right?
Why do only traditional public school teachers have to pass all these tests to earn their certification? Charters and private schools can hire people with no credentials, yet the FLDOE will kick good people to the curb because they have rusty math skills?
In the end, Commissioner Stewart’s horrible handling of this reporter is telling in three ways: 1) she’s hangry, and you wouldn’t like her when she’s hangry; 2) the FLDOE clearly does not want to discuss this issue, with her even going so far as to offer a deflective answer about turnaround schools; 3) she clearly has never, ever–not once–understood nor empathized with the plight of teachers and ESPs all across the Sunshine State who routinely sacrifice their lunch time for their students on an almost daily basis.
Teacher Voice is seeking guests to either write short posts (500 word limit) about current education issues or to discuss them in person for the biweekly podcast. Interested? Fill in the form on the Contact page or email directly at 1teachervoice@gmail.com
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