We all know that bringing in young, energetic, enthusiastic teachers is critical to the success of American public education – especially in the future. Why? Because the law of nature dictates that nurturing youthful seeds is the way to eventually build healthy, well-developed gardens.

And yet, America is dropping the educational ball on this front. Egregiously.

When the pink slips get distributed and the ax chops, who are the first to go? Our youngest teachers. Why? Because in school today we value duration of service over quality of service. (And no, I am not usually a union basher but on this matter, they don’t really make the best case in my opinion. Quality of service should count more than years of service and it’s a falsehood to automatically equate one – time spent teaching – with the other… excellence of teaching.)

Furthermore, let’s look at some of the more practical aspects of working… like the paycheck one takes home.

Last year my district cut our pay by 3%. Next year they are talking about us taking another 10% pay cut.

A 13% pay cut in two years? Not the best way to either retain or attract talent, I’d say.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. What would most people say to the Harvard Valedictorian if they informed the world that they were going to become a middle school English teacher? Not an esteemed professor. Not national leader. Not even a wretched, ink-stained author. (The most reprehensible of ‘em all, when you think of it – LOL!)

The answer would be, “A mere middle school teacher? But why?”

It’s getting harder to answer that question these days and if you re-read this blog post in the year 2020, well… don’t say “We never told ya so.”

I am going to take a break from blogging for a bit. Getting spit on last week hurt and the truth is, it kinda all goes back to grandma’s old rule: if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

With pink slips flying all around my school district – heck, all around our state – and our district preparing to hire me back next year at a pay cut of up to 12% (on top of the 3% we already took this year)… and I am one of the lucky ones cause a host of folks are being “chopped” from their positions… and the dragon of NCLB allowing the tests from ETS to be the tail that wags our entire institutional dog, well… I need to pause.

Will I rise like a phoenix from the ashes? Of course. My life is GREAT and I wouldn’t trade it for anyone’s. I love teaching, I love writing, I love working with teachers and students and I get paid to do it. My avocation is my vocation and how many people can really say that?

Yet, before the Phoenix rises from the ashes, well… people forget the part about what it’s like to descend and be mired in the ashes. There is a period of gestation when one is down and to blog my way through it, well… I just sense it could be a little ugly, cynical, jaded and dark.

Like our profession really needs that kind of energy right now.

BTW, it’s not like I don’t have some other writing to do. I am under contract for another new book of YA fiction for Disney, another new book of YA fiction for Penguin, the BookJams are just roaring right now (best teaching I have ever done) and I already have 2 new books for kids in the hopper due to be released in the next 12 months (meaning 4 in the next 24 months on top of the new BookJams as well).

So essentially, yes, I will be writing like a fiend and yes, I might return to blog sooner than I think (I feel a bit like an addict being that I have become so prolific over the past 14 months as a blogger) but, well… it all goes back to grandma’s rule.

I don’t really have a lot of nice things to say right now about school/education so I am not going to say them. However, this doesn’t mean there aren’t a heck of a lot of nice things that ought to be said.

But getting spit on was the straw that broke this camel’s back and right now, I am in a funk that requires a bit of time to sharpen the saw and figure out a few things.

Thanks for being a reader/responder/supporter/compadre… more to come… eventually.

I pulled onto campus this morning to see a host of peers protesting layoffs, budget cuts and program slashing. Somehow, I missed the memo saying they’d be gathering but my heart dropped to the floor when I saw some of my closest friends on the “picket line” imploring the people of the community to demand that our schools do not get cast into an abyss from which it will be spectacularly hard to return.

Damn, it’s hard.

It’s hard for the teachers who got pink slips. It’s hard for the teachers (like myself) who did not get pink slips but know in their hearts that losing good people when you are in a battle like all of us are for the hearts and minds of the next generation is a deep, traumatic wound. It’s hard for the district administrators, too, who have to make supremely hard choices about where to slash, where to cut and where to forge ahead. (Goodness knows, I do not envy anyone having to make these tough choices… when you are forced to cut so deeply, nobody wins. That seems quite obvious.)

It’s getting ugly out there and the fact is, at the end of the day, lots of people are going to suffer. (Ultimately, no one more so than our students, though.) I want to more vocally advocate for the idea that we need to figure out a way for all of us to join together and NOT fall victim to the finger pointing, blame, hurt and hate that is so very much right at everyone’s fingertips right now, but when you didn’t just find out you lost your job, it’s easy to say because you don’t have to go home facing the prospects of unemployment. Truly, I don’t have credibility on that front.

Not being pink-slipped almost has me feeling survivor’s guilt — which makes it tough to do my work today. Really, just when you think the madness can’t get worse, it does.

We must find a way to fight through this. And I am sure we will. But it ain’t gonna be pretty.