Opinion: Beyond the Acronyms – A Teacher’s Call for Action to Truly Serve MCPS’s Students

February 23, 2024

“We need you to succeed, the taxpayers need you to succeed, and more importantly, our kids need you to succeed”

That was said by Councilman Evan Glass to MCPS Board President Karla Silvestre on February 8th. The key phrase there is “our kids”. As an employee of MCPS for the last 11 years I have run the gamut of all kinds of policy changes, leaders, and MCPS sayings/acronyms that continue to do nothing but the opposite of helping “our kids”.

I teach in a high school where everything is supposed to be what is best for students. And I think at each individual high school putting students first has been pushed and teachers now understand all that life throws at the students. We give grace. We give our time. We give everything we got to those sometimes 170 plus kids that you teach each year.

Yet we are constantly inundated with new ways we have screwed up and it’s our fault kids fail or misbehave. “Have you tried calling home?”. “Have you asked them to come in for lunch?”. What the hell do you think we do all day? You think we are doing our job for the pay? No we do it because somewhere along the way a teacher impacted us and we want to have that same impact on a young person. Is every teacher perfect? No. But there is a more than a significant majority of them that I have taught alongside over the years that ALWAYS do right by kids. I talk daily with teachers that wrestle with the difficulties of the job. How do I help X student when he comes once a week?

Class Selection

Every year kids in high school get to pick classes. Many of them are required to graduate but many of them are classes that kids take an interest in. Whether its art, chorus, P.E., Social Studies, or English we give them the option to take things they want to learn. YET at every turn we cut these classes not because they don’t want to take them, but because we never have the staffing to run them.

Constantly shuffling kids out of classes they signed up for that have to be cut to put them in another class with “room” to take them. So kids sit in classes they are bored with or uninterested and then we wonder why kids misbehave or do poorly.

So do we put kids first? Do we care about what students want? Do we want our kids to care about something other than their phones or social media? They are actually signing up for classes that will help them in the future such as personal finance. Maybe they are interested in becoming a journalist? “Well hey guess what, now it’s an afterschool club instead of a class you can take because we can’t put a teacher in there during the day”. It’s the opposite of what we preach as a district.

Does Anyone Actually Care?

But does anyone on the board or in the central office actually care? Talk to any teacher you know, how many times a member of the board or central office just came to the school to just observe? Anytime they come it’s for a dog and pony show event or something to say hey look I was at this school today. I read a book to a kindergarten class.

Do we do fantastic things, absolutely! But that isn’t the everyday experience of a teacher or student. It’s not a real look at it. There is always an email from someone in administration “X person from the board/central office is coming so lets be showing the great things we do!” Why does it have to be a big ordeal? Can’t they just come and observe without letting anyone know?

You’re an elected official or you are running the district, you don’t need special treatment because of your title. Come watch, maybe teachers, students, and parents will actually feel like you care. One such visit was years ago where they made teachers move their vehicles so that this person from central office could park up front. Also moved teachers out of their room so they could have a space for lunch. We were also told to leave the building after school so there was no interaction. It was infuriating.

In my 11 years I have seen 1 School Board member in my building and that was during the summer. How can you have the pulse of anything without seeing it yourself? We wonder why things slip through the cracks because we pass the buck to the next person because they should be doing it.

Just come watch and you will see awesome things. You don’t need an entourage. You don’t need special treatment. Just come say hi, stay for a while you might get a lot of insight. You will see students excelling. You will see the relationships teachers and students have. You will see the dedication of the staff. But do you want to see it is the question?

Doing Right by the Students

We have great people here in this school district. I am hopeful that with time we will find our footing and get back to what matters. Titles don’t matter. Status doesn’t matter. You know what matters? The 160,000 students we have matter. Let’s ALWAYS do right by them.

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