In her poignant resignation letter, 25-year veteran teacher Susan Sluyter writes, “I have seen my career transformed into a job that no longer fits my understanding of how children #learn and what a teacher ought to do in the classroom to build a #healthy, #safe, developmentally appropriate environment for learning for each of our children.”
“I have watched as my job requirements swung away from a focus on the children, their individual learning styles, emotional needs, and their individual families, interests and strengths to a focus on testing, assessing, and scoring young children, thereby ramping up the academic demands and pressures on them.”
In expressing her reasoning, Sluyter also wrote: “When I first began #teaching more than 25 years ago, hands-on exploration, investigation, joy and love of learning characterised the early childhood classroom. I’d describe our current period as a time of testing, data collection, competition and punishment. One would be hard put these days to find joy present in classrooms.”
“There were many days last year when I felt I had hardly spent any time in the classroom. It was my assistant teacher with whom the children were more familiar. She was more in the role of classroom teacher. I was more in the role of data collector.
The negative impact of all of this on a classroom of young children (or children of any age) is substantial, and obvious to many classroom teachers. Teachers everywhere are seeing an increase in behaviour problems that make classrooms and schools feel less safe, and learning less able to take place. Children are screaming out for help. They are under too much pressure and it is just no longer possible to meet the #social and #emotional needs of our youngest children. They are suffering because of this.”
“Many kindergartens across the country no longer have sand tables, block areas, drama areas and arts and crafts centers. This is a deeply ill-informed movement, as all early #childhood experts continuously report that 4, 5 and 6 year olds learn largely through #play. Play is essential to healthy development and deep foundational learning at the kindergarten level.”
“Each year I have had less and less time to teach the children I love in the way I know best—and in the way child development experts recommend. I reached the place last year where I began to feel I was part of a broken system that was causing damage to those very children I was there to serve.
I was trying to survive in a community of colleagues who were struggling to do the same: to adapt and survive, to continue to hold onto what we could, and to affirm what we believe to be quality teaching for an early childhood classroom. I began to feel a deep sense of loss of integrity. I felt my spirit, my passion as a teacher, slip away.”
🤔 It’s time our legislators started listening to our veteran teachers before we have none left.
Read the full letter at:
www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/23/kindergarten-teacher-my-job-is-now-about-t...
#neurochild #childdevelopment #letthemplay ... See MoreSee Less
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So much truth. <3
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