The Real K-12 Blueprint: They wear us down so we are too tired to dismantle the system

Today is Sunday.

I am free to sit at my computer and write. There is no pressure to complete lesson plans.

Scratch that: There is less pressure to complete lesson plans today. Our district has the entire upcoming week off for Thanksgiving. The thought of lesson plans still looms in the back of my mind. Right alongside entering grades, writing IEPs, and catching-up on the documentation of my documentation. The list of things to-do never ends. Sure, we had lots of things to do before pandemic teaching, but this thing here…it feels different, it requires so much more, and there never seem to be enough hours in the day to get them all done.

A few days ago, I was reminded by a tweet from Shana V. White: The (K-12) system is working exactly as designed.

It was designed to give everyone the same, regardless of their individual needs as witnessed by the lackluster services provided to students served by Special Education and/or ESOL programs (pre-pandemic).

It was designed to elicit compliance, as witnessed by the teachers and administrators hellbent on forcing students to have their cameras turned on, despite the cautions from mental health experts and social workers.

It was designed to keep us dog-tired, as witnessed by the daily tweets about being tired (mostly by me), being overwhelmed, and feelings of failure. The syetme-keepers are both ok with us saying we are tired and they want us to be tired. Usually, when you are tired you cannot muster the energy to fight.

They want us to be overwhelmed because when weare, we retreat. Webeat ourselves up and then commit to trying one or five different things the next day.

They want us to feel like a failure so that we will continue to use more of our personal time learning a new program or completely redesigning a lesson that failed for no other reason than WE ARE TEACHING IN THE MIDST OF A GLOBAL PANDEMIC. Without having learned anything from this past Spring.

The K-12 education system has been gaslighting us since before we even knew to use the word gaslighting. And we fell for it, every single time.

We cannot dismantle anything if we are broken.

We cannot push for equity while running on E.

We cannot continue to light ourselves on fire to save a system that throws us an anchor when we say we are drowning.

If dismantling is worth all of this, we need to find a better way.