Dear Missouri (particularly Reps. Cookson and Schamhorst),

Seriously, you want teachers to not talk about homosexuality in school? What would you like me to do when a students comes to me, asking for help dealing with bullying, or their parents discovery of their sexual orientation, or a child who is questioning themselves, or struggling with the idea of coming out of the closet into a world that will hate them just for one small portion of their identity.

What do I do when students decide that it is acceptable for them to say "gay" in a derogatory way, and no one is willing to correct them? Am I supposed to let that slide, since I can't actually discuss the word with them? Tell a 17 year old to not use "the g word" and hope that I don't allow that confrontation to seal the envelope on some kid's suicide note? Because, you know what? I have corrected them, more than once, and had students come tell me after class that it was the first time that anyone had made them feel comfortable or safe to express themselves. Imagine eleven years of your life where you didn't feel comfortable in any class, or around your peers, because you thought that they might even suspect something about it.

I want you to imagine living a life that makes suicide not only a viable option, but a frequently accepted one. Where all the reassurance in the world is counteracted by the fact that the word that the world uses to describe you has been banned from your school, a place that should be safe, because some ridiculous lawmakers were uncomfortable with the fact that there are children who are gay, and what? Their children might be asked to sit in classes with them and treat them like human beings? Human beings defined by more than their gender and sexual orientation but also not pushed aside because of those things?

When people refuse to talk about the things that scare them, do you know what happens, Missouri? The people become more afraid of them, and then that fear leads to anger, and as Yoda says, "anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering" Why would any one wish more suffering upon children, and children's parents? I would also point out that recent scientific study has shown us that those who are adamant in their homophobia have a direct correlation with those who are, actually, homosexual themselves.

You want to know another reason why I think you're totally full of it?
I had the privilege of seeing this kid: Zach Wahls speak on The Daily Show tonight about the book that he wrote about his two mothers entitled My Two Moms. You might remember Mr. Wahls as the young man who proudly defended his mothers' ability to marry in front of the Iowa House Judiciary Committee in this poignant and erudite speech:

I agree with Jon Stewart, that this young man is the very definition of all the values and beliefs that we wish to instill in our youth, and to have any argument that you think would stand in the face of such stalwart hope and love, is to argue in denial and eventual ridicule. My only hope is that, someday, when I marry and have children of my own, I can parent them in a way that adequately reflects the amazing job that those two women have done with their son.

I can only hope that you listen to the voices of your educators, as well as parents and students whom this bill would affect, when they say things like this:

The Missouri National Educators Association, the state's largest teachers organization, blasted the bill, stating: "[L]egislation like the "Don't Say Gay" bill, proposed by Representative Steve Cookson shackles educator's efforts to prevent bullying in our public schools."  

Unless students are exposed to new and different ways of thinking, you will find yourselves with a state full of ignorant young adults who have to idea how to deal with a world that allows for the existence of those different from themselves, and our only hope for a future where America is among the best and brightest is to allow ourselves to become better than we are.

Sincerely,
A Young Teacher

Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

Superintendent of the Perrin-Whitt Consolidated School District, John Kuhn, sent this letter to Texas legislators. He modeled it after William Barret Travis' famous letter written from the Alamo just before it fell in 1836. I honestly am in awe of Superintendent Kuhn, and would like to send him flowers, or at the very least forward it to everyone I know, including my own Superintendent and State Representatives. I urge you all to do the same. Original story found in The Washington Post.

Sincerely,
A Young Teacher

From: John Kuhn, Superintendent, Perrin-Whitt CISD
To: Senator Estes, Representative Hardcastle, Representative Keffer, and Representative King during these grave times:

Gentlemen,
I am besieged, by a hundred or more of the Legislators under Rick Perry. I have sustained a continual Bombardment of increased high-stakes testing and accountability-related bureaucracy and a cannonade of gross underfunding for 10 years at least and have lost several good men and women. The ruling party has demanded another round of pay cuts and furloughs, while the school house be put to the sword and our children's lunch money be taken in order to keep taxes low for big business. I am answering the demand with a (figurative) cannon shot, and the Texas flag still waves proudly from our flag pole. I shall never surrender the fight for the children of Perrin.

Then, I call on you my legislators in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch. The enemy of public schools is declaring that spending on a shiny new high-stakes testing system is "non-negotiable"; that, in essence, we must save the test but not the teachers. The enemy of public schools is saying that Texas lawmakers won't raise 1 penny in taxes in order to save our schools.

If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and fight for the kids in these classrooms like an educator who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his community. Make education a priority!

With all due respect and urgency,

John Kuhn
Superintendent
Perrin-Whitt CISD

If you would like to read Travis' original letter, you can find it here.

Dear Texas State Board of Education,

Over the past few months, it has become apparent that there is something less than truthful about your dealings with the curriculum and textbooks. The state of Texas has become an educational joke on the scale of Kansas (no offense Kansas, but it’s true) and I for one do not approve of the politics that have taken over decision making for the "best interests" of our students. Aside from running a campaign, what qualifies you to make these decisions? Some of you have been on this committee for longer than I have been alive. With all of the advancements in theory, and technology, are you never concerned that perhaps someone younger might have a better understanding of the world we live in and the future we are supposed to be preparing our students for? Not to mention the fact hat many of you have never been teachers in the first place. Having children of your own is not the same as being qualified to make decisions for every student that goes through Texas schools for 10 years. Being a Sunday school teacher is nothing like being a high school teacher, and being a lawyer, real estate agent, or dentist doesn’t mean that you know about educational theory.

Along those same lines—I think that having party affiliations is ridiculous and asinine. It’s not as though there are Democratic educational theory and Republican educational theory. I care so much more whether you are a proponent of Ravitch or Palmer, Vygostky or Piaget. You know, things that actually mean something to educators, and say something about educational technique and outlook. Although politics has little to do with education, it’s overwhelming influence makes me feel as paranoid as a character from Brave New World. I understand that as elected officials it is easier to be elected by party affiliation, but that begs the question: what differences will that make in the quality of education that our children receive? What are the real objectives in having elected officials write the TEKS for our schools? When politics gets involved, you can be sure there are ulterior motives.

Most recently you all were in the news and other media for your decisions about the revisions posed and passed for the history curriculum. It is obvious to me that none of you are experts in history, yet you hold yourselves up to the light in just that way. To assert that you are qualified to make decisions about something that people can spend a lifetime learning, studying, and writing about simply because you “read about it a lot” defies the mind as so egocentric it ought to be illegal, and certainly is not a point to brag on.

To assert that history has a leftist bias reflects more on your own insecurities than on history textbooks. There is more to history than the white European Christian dogma; your inability to accept that shows a lack of scope that is staggering. In a state like Texas where the majority of the population is Hispanic, it seems odd to cut out leaders like Cesar Chavez and Father Romero because, well, honestly I’m not too clear on your reasoning. One of you, Patricia Hardy, is on video saying that Oscar Romero is “one of those names that I guarantee most of you did not know.” This reasoning does not incline me to disregard him as a powerful figure in world politics, or say that he wasn’t a crusader on par with Nelson Mandela. It makes me concerned that perhaps you are too ethnocentric to realize that there is a world outside of Texas, and that people who are not already famous are also worth our time and energy teaching. I mean, if our nation’s children can recognize Ronald McDonald, but more than half the people who took americanrevolution.org's quiz didn’t even realize that the American Revolution occurred before the War of 1812, that says something about our students’ ignorance on more global issues. Every year I show my students a PowerPoint of people famous around the world for various reasons, both Hollywood and politics, and generally my students think that Nelson Mandela is Morgan Freeman, and that was long before Invictus was made. Most of them don’t know who Gandhi is, or why he is famous.

On another point, public education is not allowed to advocate or advance a specific religion. To say that the United States of America is a Christian nation, and therefore we should teach Christianity in our schools goes against the Constitution, the founding document of our nation. The First Amendment of the Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” And while you may disagree with Thomas Jefferson, you can’t cut him out of the history books just because he thought that the separation of Church and State was a good thing. If you had been a real student of history, you would understand that we would be repeating the mistakes of other cultures and times, rather than learning from those cultures who allowed religion to become the end all and be all of their government. You know, like the Taliban?

You cannot simply remove things from the history books because you don’t like that they happened. I don’t like that slavery happened, but I’m not going to lie to people and say that it never happened in order to save face. I think it is better to honestly teach people than to ignore or revise things. It’s lying, and while maybe our students should get used to people in power lying to them, it seems wrong to start so young. History doesn’t work like that. You can’t rewrite history to suit a political or religious agenda. Education should make our students question, learn, and make their own decisions about the world around them. To deny them the opportunity to learn about history objectively is to deny them the choice, and to purposefully make them ignorant of the larger world outside Texas’s borders.

I fear that your inexperience in the classroom leads to your close-minded views on this subject. If you had been charged with the care and education of a truly diverse group of students you might better understand the damage your views could cause. If a child grows up in a Unitarian or Deist household, your omission of Thomas Jefferson (for his political and religious beliefs) tells these students that their views are wrong, rather than simply being different from yours. And what would you say to a Muslim, Hindi, Sikh, or Buddhist student when they hear that this is a Christian nation? Are these students going to feel equal to their peers? Or are they going to face discrimination based on opinions that are being handed down from on high by people whose religious beliefs are more important to talk about in their TEA profiles than their educational beliefs. Think about the damage that you are doing to these students by claiming a monopoly on the theology of Texas education.

The State Board of Education should be a group of educators who make the best decisions based on their experiences and thoughtful consideration of facts and opinions formulated by experts in that particular field. If this committee is going to ever be taken seriously, then certainly the children of the various board members should attend public schools, and if teachers, they should teach in our public schools as well. There is no purpose in having people make guildelines that they will not ever have to follow. Yes, Cynthia Noland Dunbar, I was thinking of you. If you ask for the opinions of teachers it would look better if you actually listened and took what they said under advisement rather than simply voting along religious party lines. If you alienate your teachers, the people who you are dictating to, then who will actually carry out your directives? What about teachers who are non-Christian? You do realize that there are teachers in your schools who are not Christian, or Republican, and that maybe, just maybe, they don’t approve of your decisions.
The real reason I decided that I had to write you is this: I am tired of Texas, the place that I love, being made a laughing stock on comedy shows across the country, including The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, just because you either don’t realize how foolish the things coming out of your mouth sound, or you honestly believe that this reason is a good one. If the former, then you should really listen to the play back on some of your meetings, and if the latter, then you should take a few modern education classes.

You claim to have changed the curriculum because there is a liberal slant in history, although the victors write history, and it seems that white European history has always taken a front seat in my education, but that is neither here nor there. If there is a liberal bias, then wouldn’t the ideal solution be a completely neutral one? It seems to me that the slant now leans just as far to the right as it once leaned to the left, and how is that any more acceptable? Just because you agree with something it’s alright for it to be slanted?

Sincerely,
A Young Teacher

Dear Superintendents of Schools,

I understand that you have a degree that is more advanced than mine. I understand that your job requires more scrutiny than I would ever want in my life. I even understand that after many years of faithful service to a district you would want to make more than the average teacher does.

What I don’t understand, however, is why, in the face of economic troubles, teacher salary shortages, the inability to hire enough teachers to adequately staff programs that you allowed to be started, not to mention nearly the 256 million dollar cut from the state budget, you would continue to be paid an exceedingly impressive salary when you could take a marginal pay cut and hire several teachers.

Now, you might say, “I deserve this salary because I lead a life that leads to questions and letters like yours. Additionally, I have several advanced degrees, and run an entire school district.” Here is my conundrum. I planned to become a teacher from a very early age, seventh grade to be exact. Even then, I knew that teachers do not make a lot of money. Schools are not a business, and I do not understand how, when we follow no other part of the business model, why we would choose to pay our top executives an outrageous salary when we don’t even give our teachers substantial raises for valuable service in the classroom. Because that is what we are supposed to consider the most important job: those who actually educate our students. Quite frankly, I don’t understand why we have so many people in a district who don’t teach. Or maybe people in our district who failed at teaching, so they became the bosses of those who do.

I think that you would gain the respect of your teachers if you discarded the excess people in administration. Do we really need so many people, when our students are suffering in classrooms that can contain more than 40 students? While I can also understand that you want to maintain a salary equal to that of your peers, so that your Superintendent is a worthy candidate, I wish that it didn’t look like you became a superintendent to make more money. Quite frankly, I would love to make as much money as the people that I graduated from college with, but I chose to be a teacher, instead of an accountant. Surely you chose education for the same reasons.

I have heard many teachers talking about how they are becoming administrators so they can make more money. Where did they miss the memo that teachers don’t make much money, and people who get into education for the money are greedy assholes? I’ve lived through superintendents who embezzled money, who used their position to hire their friends, selected poor educational tools because they received gifts, not to mention receiving a salary that was equal to four and a half teachers. Dallas ISD’s Hinojosa makes a salary that would pay for almost seven teachers with Master’s degrees and three years experience (read: me). If we cut the salaries of every Superintendent who makes more than $100,000, we could cut a lot of reasoning from that plan to fire teachers. While you could say we wouldn’t want a superintendent who didn’t want that kind of money, because it might call into question whether they they would really be a good candidate for the job. I think that a superintendent who thinks that their salary is more important than the quality and salaries of the teachers and students in their care isn’t a superintendent that I would want to have. In fact, if you were to offer me a superintendent's job right now in my district, I would happily cut more than 200K and still make twice as much as I do right now.

Here’s another question: why do you have so many dollars in surplus yet refuse to spend it on hiring the teachers that we need? If you would like to know specifically what I would like for you to do spend that money on in my district, it would be to fix the walls in our classrooms that are crumbling from all the water leaks, and hire the requisite special education teachers so that our “inclusion” classes would really be inclusion rather than the kind that require quotation marks. Having enough teachers to adequately teach the students that we have is sort of your job, right?

Sincerely,
A Young Teacher

Dear Inspiring Speaker at Convocation,

Could you please stop being so inspirational? You tell us to “fight the good fight” and “do what you need to do to make your students successful” but then you never give us any thoughts on how to solve the problem of fighting the good fight. I get all pumped up on my dreams of a better future for my students, and thinking that I can imitate you, and your successes, that I would be able to actually make a difference; make a change; do what is right. You make it sound easy, sound natural, like the right thing to do. I can’t help it. Just like in teacher movies, I start to hope for the start of school.

But then the afternoon comes, and not three hours after I heard you talk, I have to sit through meetings with administrators that I could swear were sitting near me while you were talking, and it’s like they didn’t hear a word that you were saying. Because they’re standing here in meetings telling me how important, imperative, it is for me to follow the district curriculum to the letter, that if the district says to do this and you don’t do it…the threat hangs in the air. As if I don’t know what I’m doing at all, and have no good reasons for wanting to do anything different. I know that our curriculum lady was there, and I bet she sat there nodding her head not even realizing that she is the devil that makes bad things happen.

And you stood there, with your Today show clips, and your heart-rending video of young children learning the meaning to literature and I just can’t take it! Next year, they need to hire an inspirational speaker who tells us that everything will be great if we just do what they tell us to. And she can tell us that she followed all the stuff they planned out for her, and Man, did it work wonders! And then she can follow that up with reassurances that we aren’t selling our souls by just going along with what the curriculum says, and that no, we aren’t ruining our students’ love of reading by having them read something so asininely above their abilities that they and I get so frustrated that we all give up on life for a few weeks. I need a speaker who can just wear me down. I need a speaker who can convince me that Soylent Green isn’t people; that’s just some crazy dude down on the street corner.

I would like to say that this mistaken identity hadn’t happened before with our Convocation speakers. It’s not like they bring in unknown people, and are surprised by what they say. They picked, in the last five years, three of the most famous, published education commentators/educators that exist. All three of you tell us the same thing: “it doesn’t matter what they tell you to do, you shut that door and do what you need to do in order to reach those kids.” This isn’t a surprise to anyone who had read any of your books. Why would they continue to bring you here? Don’t they see the hypocrisy? Didn’t they read your books? Watch the movie based on your life? Didn’t they see the Today show spot? Or that Oprah special? What possible purpose can they have in bringing someone here, having him or her speak to us, move us to action, and then rip the possibility of that change, that impact right out from under us? I find you inspiring, and I want to impact student lives in a similar way, but I can’t inspire anyone if I get fired for not teaching the scripted curriculum that is required in my contract.

So, try to be a little bit more beat down by the system, next time they ask you to speak at Convocation. Some of us aren’t sure we can keep hearing it.

Sincerely,
Convocation Attendee
A Young Teacher