You know, it’s going to sound sappy, but, when you’re an educator, you’re making changes in kids’ lives. And now that I’m retired, I miss the kids. And I miss the teachers.
I don’t miss what they’re having to go through now. The main focus of education now seems to be to get good test scores. Testing has always been important, but now it seems like it’s the most important thing. The teachers are now supposed to improve test scores and not ask “did they learn something.” When I was teaching at a performing arts school, I ran the computer lab, and we didn’t have Google or Facebook, which was a good thing because I didn’t have to deal with all the drama that comes with that.
I don’t miss what they’re having to go through now. The main focus of education now seems to be to get good test scores. Testing has always been important, but now it seems like it’s the most important thing. The teachers are now supposed to improve test scores and not ask “did they learn something.” When I was teaching at a performing arts school, I ran the computer lab, and we didn’t have Google or Facebook, which was a good thing because I didn’t have to deal with all the drama that comes with that.
I think with education, more of what you remember is the successes, rather than the awful things that happened. I only lived with those kids for a year, but their parents lived with them the rest of their lives, so it was hard to make life changes. But you did what you could and now a lot of my former students are friends with me on Facebook.