SC teachers are overworked, exhausted and ticked off | Opinion

It is not a great day in South Carolina for public school teachers. Today, in your schools, in your communities, your teachers are overworked, under-respected, exhausted, and ticked off. And yet, there is no one willing to take up their cause. As one of approximately 55,000 teachers in South Carolina, my tank is running empty in my 28th year, my anger is rising, and my willingness to continue in the profession is decreasing each day. I am not alone. Without better contracts, improved working conditions, and freedom from bureaucratic minutiae, the current flood of teachers leaving the profession will soon be a tsunami.

In May 2019, 10,000 teachers sought redress for these grievances from our elected representatives at the State House. Almost four years later we are still waiting for the reforms that will lift the burdens of our teachers and restore our hope that our leaders respect us.

These legislators will argue that they have improved teacher pay, and they have, incrementally, and for that we are thankful. But it is the national average we desire.

Pay is only one of the grievances we laid at their feet. We need better contracts that eliminate the expectation that we work countless hours of overtime without additional compensation. We need protected planning time, more than a 30-minute lunch break that will allow us to plan, collaborate, meet individually or in small groups with students, and to re-energize. We need smaller class sizes that allow us to give every child the full attention they deserve through individualized learning experiences.

We bureaucracy lifted from our shoulders by creating a streamlined definition of instructional spending with the needed oversight and accountability. This would require districts to eliminate unnecessary pieces of the bureaucratic machine whose only real impact is the mountain of mandates, requirements, and process-oriented minutiae that eat up teacher time, patience, and energy. This we need. Now.

But other than the welcomed incremental increases in pay, we have gotten little to nothing. We have had an almost three-year debate on Critical Race Theory that has allowed every right- to far-right wing politician to insinuate that we, as teachers, are indoctrinating students in some mythical left wing ideology.

This is the Red Scare or McCarthyism of the 21st Century. It has well served some legislators by strengthening their right wing street cred. It has served neither our teachers nor our students well. Being a political pinata never does.

What have we gotten? Not six weeks of family leave. Not the removal of the meaningless, but costly requirement to recertify. Not an extension of our teacher contracts to 195 days, with the extra days fully paid for and protected from the planners and organizers who would use this time for convocations, meetings, endless training, all the while paying us in substitute teacher pay or with flex days.

What have we gotten? Blamed by legislators for not voting or not reaching out. Why would we? Who or what is there to reach out to or for? Does the massive teacher shortage that continues to plague our state not speak volumes?

When neither party shows either the willingness or the ability to affect needed change, to whom shall we turn? We would love to have one teacher in the House or the Senate to plead our case, to advocate, to speak of the aspirations of our teachers. Out of 170 members of the General Assembly, there is not one active teacher. Why? Because to serve is to sacrifice a full-time teaching position. The planners and organizers of our districts have told us to run! Serve! But you will be paid as a part-time teacher.

They are all robbing our children of a quality education and future prosperity by their continued refusal to take on the hard work required to improve education.

South Carolina: Today, in your schools, in your communities, your teachers need you. We need your voices, we need your votes, and we need your help.