I Am a Teacher, and This Is Where I Work
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America’s classrooms are falling apart.
Last week, I mentioned that one of the things I disliked about being a teacher was that our facilities are run down.
If you don’t look too closely at the image above, it doesn’t look too bad. The necessary resources are there. There’s even a fancy, expensive interactive screen. Closer scrutiny reveals something wrong with almost everything.
If your school is like mine, the heat and AC have never worked right. Window AC units have been installed in some classrooms. Someone has used clear packing tape to seal some of the gaps.
I now have a choice in some of my classrooms during the warmer months. We can be cool, or we can hear each other speak. We can’t do both.
Some of the floors are crumbling.
Some of the ceilings and walls are crumbling.
Some of the furniture is crumbling.
Some of the carpet is stained and buckled.
The upholstery on many student desks is torn, stained, and/or marked liberally with ball point pen ink.
Some ceiling tiles are stained and bowed. Some rooms are visited by wasps, lady beetles, and stinkbugs. You can see their carcasses in silhouette inside the fluorescent…
