Category: Teaching

Articles & reflections on teaching.

Teaching in Tampa Bay: What It Really Costs to Live and Work in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, and Manatee Counties (2025–2026)

Every year, teachers from northern states consider relocating to Florida for the weather, perceived lower taxes, or lifestyle. Florida can be a beautiful place to live, but the Tampa Bay region is not inexpensive, and teaching conditions differ significantly from many other states. Anyone considering relocation should understand the full financial and professional realities before making the move.

This information applies specifically to Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, and Manatee counties.

Housing Costs and Rental Requirements

Housing is the single largest expense and the biggest shock for newcomers.

Typical Monthly Rent (2025–2026)

One-bedroom apartments:

  • Manatee and Pasco counties: approximately $1,400 to $1,800 or more
  • Hillsborough and Pinellas counties: approximately $1,700 to $2,200 or more

Two-bedroom apartments:

  • Manatee and Pasco counties: approximately $1,900 to $2,500 or more
  • Hillsborough and Pinellas counties: approximately $2,300 to $3,200 or more

These figures represent modest, basic apartments in safe areas, not luxury properties. Most affordable housing is located inland, not near the Gulf of Mexico.

Move-In Costs

Most landlords require:

  • First month’s rent
  • Last month’s rent
  • Security deposit
  • Application fees for each adult
  • Utility deposits
  • Renter’s insurance

Total move-in costs commonly range from $5,000 to $9,000 or more.

Additional requirements often include:

  • Verifiable income equal to at least three times the monthly rent
  • Credit score typically between 600 and 700 or higher
  • Clean rental history
  • Background checks for all adults
  • Pet fees, often $300–$400 per pet plus monthly pet rent

Many apartment complexes require proof of employment from a local employer or a formal job offer letter.

Income Needed to Qualify for Apartments

Because landlords typically require income equal to three times the rent, many starting teachers do not qualify for market-rate apartments on salary alone.

Examples for one-bedroom units:

  • $1,500 rent requires $4,500 monthly income ($54,000 annually)
  • $1,800 rent requires $5,400 monthly income ($64,800 annually)
  • $2,000 rent requires $6,000 monthly income ($72,000 annually)
  • $2,200 rent requires $6,600 monthly income ($79,200 annually)

Examples for two-bedroom units:

  • $2,300 rent requires $6,900 monthly income ($82,800 annually)
  • $2,600 rent requires $7,800 monthly income ($93,600 annually)
  • $3,000 rent requires $9,000 monthly income ($108,000 annually)

Beach Living Expectations

Many people assume that living in the Tampa Bay area means living near the beach. In reality, affordable housing is usually far inland.

Typical home prices:

  • Inland homes not near water: roughly $350,000 to $600,000 or more
  • Modest homes within a short driving distance of beaches (30 minutes or less): roughly $600,000 to $900,000 or more
  • Modest homes in true beach communities or on barrier islands: commonly $1 million to $5 million or more

A budget of $500,000 rarely buys a home near the beach in this region.

Even residents of the Tampa Bay area often live 45 to 90 minutes from Gulf beaches depending on traffic.

Beach Access Challenges

During winter tourist season, spring break, and summer weekends:

  • Parking lots frequently fill by 7:00 to 8:00 AM
  • Traffic to barrier islands becomes gridlocked
  • Some beaches close access when parking is full
  • Leaving the beach can take several hours

Many locals avoid weekend beach trips for this reason.

Buying a Home: Property Taxes and Homestead Exemption

Florida property taxes differ from those in many other states.

If the property is your primary residence, you may apply for the Homestead Exemption, which provides:

  • A property tax reduction (minimum $25,000 exemption)
  • Limits on annual tax increases through the Save Our Homes provision
  • Strong legal protection against forced sale by most creditors

Requirements include establishing Florida residency and applying by March 1 of the year following purchase.

Properties without homestead status can be taxed at much higher rates.

Home Insurance and Hurricane Risk

Insurance costs are one of the largest ongoing expenses for homeowners in Florida.

Premiums have risen dramatically statewide, especially in coastal regions.

Most policies include a separate hurricane deductible that applies when a storm is officially named. This deductible is typically $5,000 at minimum and may be far higher depending on the home’s value.

Wind damage during named storms is extremely common. Homes may lose:

  • Roof shingles or entire roofing sections
  • Fences
  • Sheds
  • Pool enclosures
  • Screens
  • Trees and landscaping
  • Exterior structures

Flooding is not required for significant damage to occur.

After major storms, insurance claims may take months or even years to resolve due to high demand, contractor shortages, and disputes over coverage.

Utilities and Transportation Costs

Common ongoing expenses include:

  • Very high electric bills during summer due to continuous air conditioning
  • Variable water and sewer costs depending on municipality
  • Auto insurance rates among the highest in the United States
  • Potential flood insurance requirements for homeowners

Public transportation is limited in most areas. Most residents need a personal vehicle, and traffic congestion is severe, especially in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. Population increases during winter due to seasonal residents further worsen traffic conditions.

Teaching in Tampa Bay Area School Districts

Florida eliminated traditional tenure for most teachers. Employment is generally based on annual contracts renewed each year. Job security depends heavily on evaluations and district funding. As an ‘at will’ employment state, districts do not have to give a reason for non-renewing a teacher.

Advancement positions such as instructional coach or literacy specialist are typically filled internally. New hires often must teach for several years in that specific district before being eligible to join that hiring pool.

Teacher unions have less bargaining power than in many northern states, and raises are often modest. Health insurance premiums typically increase annually.

Some districts provide additional pay only if advanced degrees directly match the teacher’s current assignment. Changing positions can eliminate these supplements.

Starting Teacher Salaries for 2025–2026

The following figures represent approximate base salaries for new teachers with a bachelor’s degree.

Hillsborough County (Tampa)
Starting salary approximately $48,000 per year.

Pinellas County (St. Petersburg and Clearwater)
Starting salary approximately $52,000 to $53,000 per year.

Pasco County
Starting salary approximately $47,000 to $50,000 per year.

Manatee County
Starting salary approximately $55,000 per year including local referendum supplement.

Estimated Monthly Take-Home Pay

Florida teachers contribute 3 percent of salary to the Florida Retirement System and pay federal taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and insurance premiums. Total deductions typically range from about 22 percent to 30 percent of gross salary.

Estimated monthly net pay for a single teacher:

Hillsborough County
Gross monthly about $4,000
Estimated take-home about $2,850 to $3,050

Pinellas County
Gross monthly about $4,350
Estimated take-home about $3,050 to $3,300

Pasco County
Gross monthly about $3,900 to $4,150
Estimated take-home about $2,750 to $3,100

Manatee County
Gross monthly about $4,580
Estimated take-home about $3,200 to $3,450

Actual take-home varies depending on insurance selections and optional benefits.

Family Logistics

School bus service does not reach all neighborhoods, requiring parents to provide transportation. Childcare costs are high, and quality daycare programs often have waiting lists.

Climate and Weather Conditions

Living in Florida is very different from visiting.

Summer temperatures frequently reach the 90s with heat index values between 100 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit, making outdoor activity difficult during midday.

The rainy season typically runs from June through September. Daily afternoon thunderstorms are common, bringing heavy rain, lightning, and occasional street flooding. High humidity can cause mold problems in homes, and power outages sometimes occur.

Hurricane season runs from June through November. Storms may require evacuations, school closures, and significant preparation expenses.

Tourism and Seasonal Population Changes

Many parts of the Tampa Bay region rely heavily on tourism. Population increases substantially during winter months when seasonal residents arrive. Traffic congestion worsens, hotel rates increase, and public spaces become crowded.

Some industries experience reduced hours during off-peak periods, making financial planning important. This is especially true for teachers counting on a second income to afford basic expenses.

Moving Without a Plan

Local community groups frequently report families who relocate without securing housing or employment first and struggle to meet rental requirements or save for deposits. Hotel living is expensive and can quickly deplete savings.

Experts strongly recommend securing both employment and housing before relocating and maintaining savings sufficient to cover at least three to six months of expenses.

Positive Aspects of Living in the Region

Despite the challenges, many people enjoy living in the Tampa Bay area. Advantages include no state income tax, mild winters, access to beaches and natural areas, diverse communities, and ongoing demand for teachers.

Final Advice

Anyone considering relocation should:

  • Visit during the summer, not just winter
  • Research the specific school district thoroughly
  • Secure a written job offer
  • Secure housing before moving
  • Budget for full living costs, not just rent
  • Maintain substantial savings

With careful planning, relocating to Florida can be successful. Without preparation, it can be financially and professionally difficult.

When People Say Teachers Knew What They Signed Up For

You say that when I became a teacher, I knew what I was “signing up for.”

I’m here to tell you that I didn’t. I don’t think most of us did.

When I accepted the job and saw that wonderful, yet modest, pay scale, I didn’t know I didn’t know it existed mostly on paper.  I didn’t know that for the first five years I taught, all pay increases would be frozen. I didn’t know we would receive only a one- or two-percent cost-of-living increase while, at the same time, the cost of our “free” healthcare quietly increased.

I didn’t realize that for five straight years, my actual take-home pay would decrease each year, even with outstanding evaluations and high test scores. By year five, I was earning several thousand dollars less than I had in my first year in the exact same position. I certainly didn’t realize I would never recover the raises that were promised but never delivered.

I didn’t realize the pay scale would be “revised” later in my career, revised in ways that paid new teachers more while experienced teachers earned less.

I didn’t realize the system would change so that no matter how many years I had taught, I would have to be renewed every single year, and could lose my job without explanation, no matter how long I had taught. I certainly didn’t sign up to spend every spring wondering whether I would still have a job the next fall.

I thought I was hired to teach during contracted hours, with time built into each day to plan lessons, prepare materials, make copies, grade papers, and return calls and emails. I didn’t realize that much of that existed only on paper. I didn’t realize that most of it would spill into evenings and weekends, carving out large pieces of my personal life.

Instead of planning and grading during the school day, we sat through mandatory meetings, answered administrative emails, graphed data, and completed endless administrative forms and sumamries.

I didn’t sign up for a job that required so much unpaid labor after hours that I couldn’t hold the second job I needed just to make ends meet.

I didn’t realize I would be so physically and emotionally drained that I would have little energy left for the people and things I loved.

I came prepared to teach content. I came prepared to understand pedagogy and child development. I came prepared to nurture, engage, and inspire.

I didn’t sign up to produce mini theatrical performances for every lesson, productions that often took longer to plan than to teach. I didn’t know I would be expected to compete with Emmy-winning actors, multimedia designers, and video game developers just to hold my students’ attention.

I also didn’t know how many things would be completely outside my control.

I didn’t know I wouldn’t be allowed to send an unruly student to the office.

I didn’t know that when a student spit on another student, or defiantly refused to stop, that I would be blamed for that child’s actions.  Somehow, it became my failure as a teacher.

I didn’t know that when a student failed to complete work, I would be required to call, email, text, write notes home, and even send letters; and when none of those were acknowledged, I would still be held responsible for the lack of response.

I didn’t know that if a parent failed to attend conferences, I would have to document every attempt at communication as proof that I had done my job, because the default assumption was that I hadn’t.

I didn’t know that a parent could appear two days before the end of the school year claiming they had never been contacted, demand make-up work and extra credit, and that I would be required to not only to provide it, but then grade that last-minute, incomplete work as though it were a heroic effort deserving praise and a passing grade.

I didn’t know that I would have no say in the curriculum or how it must be delivered.

I didn’t know that schools could advertise small class sizes that didn’t match reality. Class size was calculated by dividing the total number of teachers, including specialists who didn’t have their own classrooms, by the total number of students.

On paper, our second-grade classes had 18 students. In reality, there were 24 children in each room.

A high school math class might be listed as having 28 students — but if you walked in, you might count 42 desks filled.

I didn’t know I would have no meaningful input in how many students with significant behavioral challenges were placed in my classroom, or that I might receive no warning at all, even when their behaviors were already well known by the people making those decisions.

I didn’t know that violent outbursts could become normalized. I didn’t know that a student who overturned tables or threw chairs might return to my room the same day, sometimes with a bag of chips and a Capri Sun in hand.

I didn’t know I would have no real control over whether students with disabilities actually received the services and accommodations they were promised, and that I would not be permitted to speak openly about those gaps, even when parents asked directly.

I didn’t know I would be held accountable for test scores tied to curriculum I didn’t choose, pacing guides I couldn’t adjust, and students who arrived multiple grade levels behind.

I didn’t know I wouldn’t be allowed to slow down for struggling students even when I knew they needed it.

I didn’t know that students who were years behind would be moved forward regardless, and that when they became frustrated, disengaged, or disruptive, I would be the one who was blamed.

Teachers have very little authority over the systems that shape their classrooms, and yet their work is micromanaged at every turn.

We’re told to “keep control of the classroom,” while the very tools that used to help us do that have slowly and systematically been taken away.

We are told to hold students accountable while our hands are tied.

We’re judged by test scores, even when the tests don’t line up with the curriculum we’re mandated to teach.

No, I didn’t know all of this when I “signed up.”

And neither did most of us.

So, the next time you’re tempted to say that teachers shouldn’t complain because they “knew what they signed up for,” understand this: we didn’t sign up for most of what the job has become.

Why More Money Will Not Fix Teaching – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

What Teachers Wish They Could Tell You – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

The Quiet Heart of Teacher Burnout – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Teaching Without Trust: How Scripted Lessons Undermine Learning – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

The Numbers Behind Special Education in Public Schools

How Public Schools Are Becoming the System of Last Resort

A Real-World Simulation

Decorative image of four elementary school students arriving at school and being faced with a wall of graphs, charts, and figures.

Of course, schools do not have identical class sizes, the same number of classes per grade, or special education students evenly split among classrooms. In real life, students cluster. Some grade levels have more needs than others. Some classrooms end up with more complex combinations. Staffing fluctuates year to year. Schedules collide. Services overlap.

To those who suggest that special education students should simply be placed into one classroom per grade level, it is important to understand that this approach is not consistent with federal law. Federal statutes and regulations require schools to educate students in the least restrictive environment appropriate to their needs. Deliberately segregating students who could be educated alongside peers can place districts out of compliance and can subject them to huge fines. And even setting the law aside, what parent would willingly choose the one general education classroom overloaded with high-need students, particularly when behavior challenges are part of the equation?

A Numeric Example

So, let’s look at the numbers. Imagine a local elementary school with approximately 500 students. To keep the math clean, we will use 504 students. The school serves preK through fifth grade, which is seven grade levels. There are three classrooms per grade, and the average class size is 24 students. That means each grade level has 72 students, split evenly across three classrooms.

Now, apply a conservative estimate that 10 percent of students receive special education services of varying degrees. In a school of about 500 students, that equals roughly 50 students with IEPs. Spread across seven grade levels, that works out to about seven special education students per grade.

If those students were perfectly and intentionally distributed to provide the greatest possible interaction with non disabled peers, consistent with federal special education requirements, each grade level would look like this:

Two classrooms with two students on IEPs
One classroom with three students on IEPs

Even in this neat and unrealistic scenario, every classroom includes multiple students requiring accommodations, data tracking, service minutes, and coordination. But special education students are not evenly distributed. When there are behavior needs, safety concerns, or significant academic gaps, students tend to be clustered in certain rooms for practical scheduling reasons.

What appears on paper as two, two, and three often becomes one, one, and five. Sometimes it becomes zero, two, and five. This happens before you account for gifted clustering, English learner clustering, or the impact of one very high-need student on classroom dynamics.

Staffing Assumptions

Now, assume this school has:

  • Two special education teachers
  • Seven paraprofessionals

That sounds reasonable until the workload is examined.

The Compliance Workload

Using conservative estimates:

Each of the 50 students has at least two IEP meetings per year. Each meeting lasts approximately two and a half hours. That is five hours per student per year, or 250 hours total.

Writing the proposed IEP for each student takes at least five hours per year. That adds another 250 hours.

Updating the IEP four times per year takes at least three hours per update, or twelve hours per student annually. That equals 600 hours.

Data gathering and documentation takes at least two hours per week per student and must be completed by a special education teacher. Over a school year, that equals 104 hours per student, or 5,200 hours total.

Add those together and you get:

250 hours for meetings
250 hours for writing IEPs
600 hours for updates
5,200 hours for data collection

That equals 6,300 hours per year of special education teacher time. With two special education teachers, that is 3,150 hours per teacher per year.

So, in this simulation, each special education teacher is being assigned more than double the hours that exist in the work year, and that is before you count:

  • time walking between classrooms
  • crisis response
  • parent communication
  • teacher consultation
  • compliance paperwork outside IEP writing
  • scheduling services
  • evaluating progress monitoring tools
  • documenting accommodations and modifications

This is why special education teachers burn out, and why so many leave. It is not because they do not care. It is because the math does not work.

A typical school year includes about 190 days. Even assuming a generous 7.5 hour workday, that equals approximately 1,425 working hours per teacher per year. So, before any instruction occurs, each special education teacher has already been assigned more than double the number of hours that exist in the work year.

At first glance, it may seem logical to simply add more special education teachers. In reality, school personnel budgets are finite. Adding two special education teachers does not happen in isolation. It usually requires eliminating two other teaching positions, most often general education classroom teachers. When that happens, those classrooms disappear, and the students in them are redistributed across the remaining classes. Class sizes increase, instructional demands rise, and general education teachers face even greater strain. The staffing problem is not solved. It is shifted.

What the Simulation Still Does Not Include

Do you notice what is missing from this calculation? There is no time included for special education teachers to actually teach students. There is no time included to deliver the IEP service minutes that students are legally entitled to receive. There is no time allocated for small group instruction, pull-out reading or math interventions, co-teaching in general education classrooms, or reteaching content in accessible ways.

There is also no time included for supervising and supporting paraprofessionals. Paras are often assigned to students with complex needs and challenging behaviors. They require training, feedback, observation, and guidance. Special education teachers are responsible for monitoring implementation of behavior plans, adjusting supports, coordinating schedules, troubleshooting problems, and ensuring accommodations are delivered consistently. None of that appears in the hours above.

The simulation also does not account for the daily reality of special education work. There are student crises, meltdowns, safety incidents, parent communication, teacher consultations, missed services that must be made up, compliance paperwork beyond the IEP itself, and the constant switching between classrooms and grade levels throughout the day.

The 6,300 hours represent only documentation and compliance demands. The actual teaching and service delivery, which should be the heart of special education, sits on top of a workload that already exceeds the number of hours available.

The Service Minutes Problem

Service minutes are the number of minutes each special education student is guaranteed to receive, and the specific number of minutes is determined in that student’s IEP (Individualized Education Plan). These minutes are intended to be provided by a fully certified special education instructor, not a paraprofessional or a general education teacher.

Consider this school, which has two special education teachers serving fifty students, each of whom is entitled to thirty minutes of service per day. That number is an approximation. Some may require 10 minutes per day, and others 50 minutes per day, but 30 minutes per day is a reasonable average. That requirement alone adds up to 1,500 minutes, or 25 hours of mandated service every school day. Spread across two teachers, this translates to 12.5 hours of direct service per teacher per day. But the school day is only 7.5 hours long.

Even under the most generous assumptions, that workload is impossible. A full-time teacher cannot provide more than approximately 7.5 hours of direct instruction in a day, and that figure is overly optimistic. It does not account for lunch, transitions between students, legally required breaks, planning, documentation, meetings, or compliance work. When required service minutes exceed the total hours available in a school day, the shortfall is structural, not individual. Once again, the math does not work.

Why This Matters

This is why special education teachers burn out. This is why so many leave. It is not because they lack dedication or skill. It is because the system assigns more work than time allows.

No amount of passion, organization, or sacrifice can make an impossible workload possible. When schools rely on goodwill to bridge structural gaps, everyone eventually loses. Students do not receive the services they are promised. Teachers are placed in constant ethical conflict. This is not a failure of individual educators. It is a failure of system design.

The Second Shift: What Happens When Students Leave

Now let’s add a second, very realistic variable. Assume that 10 percent of the students leave this public school and enroll in charter schools or private schools using a voucher program. That means 50 students leave a school that originally enrolled about 500 students.

Voucher-funded schools are not required to accept or serve students with significant disabilities because they do not receive federal special education funding. In practice, many either decline to enroll students with special needs altogether or accept only those with minimal support requirements. For the purpose of this simulation, we will assume that the students who leave are not students receiving special education services, because that is typically what happens.

When Enrollment Changes

Original enrollment:

  • 504 total students
  • 50 students with IEPs
  • 454 general education students

After 10 percent leave:

  • 454 total students
  • 50 students with IEPs
  • 404 general education students

No special education students leave, but 50 general education students do. Originally, students with IEPs made up about 10 percent of the school population. After this shift, they now make up about 11 percent of the school. The percentage change looks small, but the classroom impact is immediate.

Funding Changes

When students leave using vouchers, state funding follows them. Federal special education funding does not increase to compensate, and fixed costs remain.

The school now has:

  • 10 percent fewer students
  • 10 percent less state funding

But it does not have:

  • 10 percent fewer special education students
  • 10 percent fewer IEPs
  • 10 percent fewer legal obligations

Staffing cannot be reduced proportionally. The school still needs special education teachers, paraprofessionals, and specialists to meet mandated services. Cutting even one paraprofessional can destabilize multiple classrooms. Cutting a special education teacher often places the district out of compliance. So funding shrinks, but responsibilities remain unchanged.

Classroom Impact

At first glance, general education class sizes may appear slightly smaller. But because the students who leave are primarily general education students without IEPs, the ratio of students with disabilities inside classrooms increases.

Classrooms that once had two students with IEPs now have three. Classrooms that had three may now have four or five. Clustering intensifies, especially for students with behavioral or safety needs. The overall number of classrooms usually stays the same, but the complexity inside them increases. Nothing about teaching becomes easier.

Staffing Pressure Intensifies

As funding drops, districts often respond by freezing hiring, leaving vacancies unfilled, or reducing paraprofessional hours. Caseloads increase. Support services are stretched thinner.

Special education teachers still carry the same compliance workload for the same number of students. The 6,300 hours of compliance work from the first simulation does not change.

General education teachers now face classrooms with higher concentrations of need and fewer supports. Instructional time erodes. Behavioral incidents increase. Burnout accelerates.

Missed Service Minutes and Enforcement

At this point, missed services become unavoidable. As special education minutes are not met, some parents begin to notice and report these shortfalls to the state education agency, which enforces federal special education law under oversight from the U.S. Department of Education.

When investigations confirm that services were missed, districts face consequences. They are required to correct violations and often must provide “compensatory education services” to make up for instruction, therapy, or supports that were not delivered. These services must be provided outside the regular school day or year and are paid for by the district.

Compensatory education is expensive. Districts may need to hire private providers, pay overtime, or contract specialized services. Costs can range from several thousand dollars for a single student to hundreds of thousands of dollars across multiple cases. In some states, districts also face additional financial penalties tied to corrective action plans or heightened monitoring.

These costs do not stay contained. They are absorbed at the district level and reduce resources available to all schools in the system. Money that could have been used to hire staff or stabilize classrooms is redirected to address compliance failures after the fact.

Administrative Disruption

Enforcement actions also bring disruption. Staff may be reassigned or removed from classrooms to handle corrective paperwork. Administrators may be replaced or relocated as required by federal regulations. New compliance personnel may be brought in temporarily. Each change interrupts services yet again.

Teachers lose continuity. Students lose stability. The system becomes even harder to manage, and the cost of providing services increases.

The Loop Accelerates

Parents of general education students notice increased disruption and instability. Families with options begin to leave. Each departure further reduces funding and increases the concentration of need. This causes the cycle to repeat.

More students leave. Fewer supports remain. More services are missed. More enforcement follows. More money is diverted away from classrooms. More teachers leave.

Why This Matters

This is how public schools become oversaturated with high-need students; not through bad intent, but through policy choices that leave public schools responsible for the greatest needs while funding and flexibility steadily drain away. Public schools are required to serve every student, regardless of need or cost. Voucher-funded schools are not. What begins as parental choice becomes a structural imbalance that public schools are left to absorb.

A Third Shift: When Another 5 Percent Leave

Now extend the simulation one more step. Assume that an additional 5 percent of students leave the public school after the first wave. That is 25 more students, again primarily general education students without IEPs.

The school now looks like this:

  • Original enrollment: 504 students
  • After first wave: 454 students
  • After second wave: 429 students

Special education enrollment remains unchanged:

  • 50 students with IEPs

The proportion of students with IEPs has now risen to nearly 12 percent of the student body. This increase did not happen because more students suddenly qualified for services. It happened because the students who could leave did leave.

Classroom Reality After More Students Leave

The number of classrooms does not shrink easily. Schools cannot always collapse sections midyear without violating contracts, schedules, or staffing requirements, but the composition inside those classrooms shifts again.

Classrooms that once had:

  • 2 students with IEPs now have 3 or 4
  • 3 students with IEPs now have 4 or 5
  • One classroom per grade may now carry the majority of students with significant behavioral or instructional needs

General education teachers are now expected to manage:

  • Higher instructional differentiation
  • More behavior plans
  • More documentation
  • More crisis management

with fewer paraprofessionals and fewer specialists available. At this point, classrooms are no longer strained. They are unstable.

Staffing Becomes Impossible to Maintain

Districts now face a dilemma. They cannot reduce special education staff because legal obligations remain unchanged. They also cannot afford to add staff because funding has dropped by 15 percent overall.

The most common responses are:

  • Larger caseloads
  • Fewer paraprofessional hours
  • Delayed evaluations
  • Missed services
  • Increased reliance on paperwork to document intent rather than delivery

This is where compliance begins to fail regularly, not occasionally.

The Cost Comparison Schools Avoid Making

Now let’s compare this reality with a different choice.

Cost of Compensatory Education and Enforcement

Cost of Compensatory Education and Enforcement

When a school district fails to provide the special education services a student is legally entitled to receive, the remedy is known as compensatory education. Compensatory education is not a proactive support. It is a corrective measure ordered after a violation has already occurred.

Enforcement typically begins when a parent or guardian files a formal complaint with the state education agency, alleging that required services were not provided. The state then conducts an investigation, reviews records, and issues findings. If the complaint is substantiated, the district is required to provide services to compensate for what the student missed.

Because these services are intended to make up for lost instructional time rather than replace current instruction, compensatory education is frequently delivered outside the regular school day. This may include after-school sessions, weekend instruction, school breaks, or services provided during the summer.

Compensatory education commonly includes:

  • Private tutoring or therapy
  • Extended school year services
  • After-school or weekend instruction
  • Contracted specialists or outside providers

A single compensatory package for one student can easily cost $5,000 to $20,000. Multiply that across even ten students, and the district is now spending $50,000 to $200,000 after the fact.

In addition to direct services, districts often incur further costs related to enforcement, including:

  • Legal consultation
  • Compliance monitoring
  • Administrative reassignment
  • Overtime for documentation and reporting

The total cost rises further.

None of these expenditures improve day-to-day classroom conditions. They do not add staff, reduce caseloads, or provide preventative support. They exist solely to address violations after harm has already occurred.

Cost of Compensatory Education and Enforcement

When a school district fails to provide the special education services a student is legally entitled to receive, the remedy is known as compensatory education. Compensatory education is not a proactive support. It is a corrective measure ordered after a violation has already occurred.

Enforcement typically begins when a parent or guardian files a formal complaint with the state education agency, alleging that required services were not provided. The state then conducts an investigation, reviews records, and issues findings. If the complaint is substantiated, the district is required to provide services to compensate for what the student missed.

Because these services are intended to make up for lost instructional time rather than replace current instruction, compensatory education is frequently delivered outside the regular school day. This may include after-school sessions, weekend instruction, school breaks, or services provided during the summer.

Compensatory education commonly includes:

  • Private tutoring or therapy
  • Extended school year services
  • After-school or weekend instruction
  • Contracted specialists or outside providers

A single compensatory package for one student can easily cost $5,000 to $20,000. Multiply that across even ten students, and the district is now spending $50,000 to $200,000 after the fact.

In addition to direct services, districts often incur further costs related to enforcement, including:

  • Legal consultation
  • Compliance monitoring
  • Administrative reassignment
  • Overtime for documentation and reporting

The total cost rises further.

None of these expenditures improve the day-to-day classroom conditions. They do not add staff, reduce caseloads, or provide preventative support. They exist solely to address violations after a student has been denied the special education services they are legally entitled to receive.

Cost of Proactive Staffing

Now let’s compare the costs of failing to provide required services to the cost of prevention. The average salary and benefits for one experienced special education teacher often fall between $70,000 and $90,000, depending on the district.

One additional special education teacher could:

  • Reduce caseloads
  • Ensure service minutes are met
  • Supervise paraprofessionals more effectively
  • Support general education teachers directly
  • Prevent missed services before complaints occur

In many cases, the cost of compensatory services for a single student exceeds the cost of hiring an additional teacher who could have prevented the violations in the first place. Yet districts routinely choose the former.

You may wonder why these financial decisions keep being made. Preventive staffing costs are visible, ongoing, and politically difficult to sustain. It is hard to persuade taxpayers to invest in preventing a problem that might occur. Compensatory services, by contrast, are reactive, fragmented, and frequently absorbed into district-level budgets. Once ordered through enforcement, districts have no option but to allocate the required funds.

So districts absorb the chaos instead. Teachers absorb the stress. Students absorb the disruption. Parents absorb the frustration. And the system quietly pays more for worse outcomes, in part because enforcement depends on families who know their rights, understand the procedures, and have the time and capacity to pursue them, making it financially cheaper for the school district to underprovide services than to staff adequately upfront.

Where the Cycle Ultimately Leads

At this stage, public schools are left with:

  • The highest concentration of need
  • The fewest resources
  • The greatest legal exposure
  • The highest staff turnover

Meanwhile, alternative settings continue to enroll easier to serve students with fewer obligations.

Non-public schools can be more stable places to work because they typically have fewer behavioral crises, smaller class sizes, and far less compliance pressure. Many also retain the ability to disenroll students whose needs they determine they cannot meet, returning those students to public schools.

For these reasons, such settings are understandably appealing to educators. As a result, many experienced and highly effective teachers leave public schools for charter or private schools where working conditions are more sustainable.

Those who remain in public schools are not less capable or less committed. They are often the teachers with fewer options, deeper ties to their communities, or a strong sense of obligation to the students who are left behind. But as staffing churn increases, institutional knowledge is lost, mentoring disappears, and classrooms are increasingly staffed by newer or overwhelmed teachers who are asked to do more with less support.

The result is not just a loss of personnel, but a loss of stability. Students who need consistency the most experience the highest turnover. Teachers who stay face heavier loads and fewer colleagues to share them. The cycle tightens, and recovery becomes harder with each passing year.

Public schools are not failing because they serve students with disabilities. They are failing because policy choices concentrate responsibility without preserving the resources required to meet it.  Until that imbalance is addressed, every reform effort will treat symptoms rather than causes.

What Fixing This Actually Requires

Fixing this problem does not require choosing between inclusion and exclusion. It requires structural honesty.

First, placement decisions must be driven by student need rather than fear of litigation or ideological pressure. Inclusion is not synonymous with identical placement. Some students thrive in general education classrooms with appropriate supports. Others require smaller settings or specialized programs. Those placements are not failures. They are appropriate matches.

Second, funding must align with obligation. Public schools cannot remain the default placement for the highest-need students while resources steadily leave through voucher systems. If public schools are required to serve every student, funding structures must reflect that responsibility. Federal funding must also increase to make compliance with those requirements realistically achievable.

Third, preventive staffing must be prioritized over reactive compliance. Districts routinely spend more on compensatory services, legal consultation, and crisis management than they would on additional teachers and specialists. Redirecting resources toward staffing reduces violations, stabilizes classrooms, and improves outcomes.

Fourth, special education teachers must be given realistic caseloads and time to teach. Compliance cannot be layered endlessly on top of instruction without consequences. When teachers leave, it is not a personal failure; it is a signal that the system is unsustainable.

True inclusion means access, support, and belonging, not just physical placement. It also requires the courage to make appropriate placement decisions, even when those decisions are contested.

When schools delay changes out of fear of litigation or parental pressure, the cost is borne by classrooms. Months of disruption, documentation, and instability follow, often ending in the same placement change that should have happened earlier. The financial and human costs of this delay far exceed the cost of acting decisively in the first place.

Public schools are not failing because they serve students with disabilities. They are being placed in an increasingly unsustainable position by policy decisions that concentrate the highest needs in one system while allowing money, flexibility, and stability to flow elsewhere. Until that imbalance is addressed, no amount of policy changes or new initiatives will alter what teachers and students experience in classrooms each day.

Real improvement begins when placement decisions are driven by student needs, when public schools are fully resourced to serve the students they are legally required to educate, and when schools are given the staffing and flexibility necessary to make inclusion work as it was originally intended. Inclusion was meant to expand opportunity, not to overwhelm classrooms or leave students and teachers struggling in environments that cannot meet their needs.

That balance cannot exist while current voucher systems continue to operate as they do now. When funding follows students out of public schools, but the highest need and most expensive students have no option but to remain, public education is left carrying responsibility without the means to meet it. Public schools become the system of last resort for students with significant disabilities, behavioral challenges, or complex needs, while other schools are permitted to opt out of serving them altogether.

This arrangement is not sustainable. If public education is to remain viable, responsibility must be shared, placements must be appropriate, and policies must stop concentrating the greatest needs in one system while steadily eroding public schools’ ability to retain students, staff, and resources.

Author’s Note:
This article was written with deep respect for students, families, and educators. It is not an argument against inclusion, special education, or students with disabilities. It is not about blame. It is about understanding how well-intended policies interact in real classrooms, and why the outcomes so often fall short of what anyone wants.

This numeric simulation does not rely on worst-case scenarios or extreme assumptions. It reflects the daily realities faced by public schools serving students with disabilities. When policy choices, funding structures, and legal obligations are examined together, the outcome becomes clear. Public schools are not failing special education. They are being asked to carry it alone.

If you’d like to read more about the history of schools and special education, you might want to read

The Good Old Days — But for Whom?  When Schools Changed: The Forgotten Truth About Inclusion and Exclusion fore special education % – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

If you’d like to read more articles about teaching and education by Jan Mariet, try

What Teachers Wish They Could Tell You – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Why More Money Will Not Fix Teaching – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Teaching vs. Other Professions – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Teaching Without Trust: How Scripted Lessons Undermine Learning – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Why Early Printing Instruction Matters – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Teaching vs. Other Professions

Why Teachers Are Denied Professional Respect

A professional teacher standing in front of a high school class, teaching.

Professional Trust in Practice

I have never gone to a doctor’s appointment and watched them be treated the way teachers are treated. If a patient is rude or disruptive, the doctor is not told to ‘build a relationship.’ They are not blamed for the behavior. They are not asked what they could have done differently. No one evaluates their tone, facial expressions, or whether they smiled warmly enough while enforcing boundaries. No one questions whether the doctor had clear rules and expectations posted on the wall of the exam room. And no one would expect that. Doctors are trusted professionals. Their expertise is assumed. Their time is protected. Their authority is respected.

When Professional Boundaries Are Assumed

The contrast with teaching is striking. No one asks a doctor to supply their own alcohol swabs, gloves, cotton balls, or medical equipment because it is “not in the budget.” These materials are recognized as essential for providing safe and effective care. Likewise, no one expects a doctor to keep snacks on hand in case a patient’s behavior is driven by hunger, or to personally fund and maintain a calm, dedicated space to manage an enraged or disruptive patient.

Teachers, meanwhile, routinely purchase basic necessities out of pocket: paper, pencils, books, classroom materials, even food for students. This expectation has become so normalized that refusing to do so is often framed as a lack of compassion rather than a reasonable professional boundary.

Expectations Around Time and Availability

No one insists that a doctor meet with patients in the evening, long after the practice has closed, because some people are ‘too busy’ to come during business hours. Missed appointments carry consequences, and endless reschedules would never be permitted. Responsibility is clear.

Teachers are expected to be endlessly available before school, after school, in the evenings, and on weekends, often without compensation. When parents do not attend conferences, return emails, or follow through at home, the burden still falls on the teacher. Somehow, it becomes their failure to reach out enough. Many teachers are required to tutor or reteach students who failed to put in any effort during class time, after school, before school, or during the teacher’s lunch time. These duties are typically added on to the teacher’s workload, and are often not optional.

Professional Space and Interruptions

No one forces their way into a doctor’s exam room while another patient is being seen to ask one quick question, demand explanations about unrelated issues, or challenge decisions in real time. That behavior would result in immediate removal from the office. Medical offices are set up to protect doctors from distractions or intrusions on their time.

Yet teachers experience constant interruptions. Parents appear unannounced. Students arrive late and disrupt instruction. Teachers are summoned during class for early dismissals or office requests. Administrators pull teachers mid-lesson to address behavior issues or parent concerns. What would be considered inappropriate in other professions is treated as normal in the classroom.

Responsibility Versus Blame

If a patient ignores a doctor’s instructions, fails to take medication, disregards dietary restrictions, or skips follow-up care, the doctor is not held accountable for the outcome. Responsibility rests where it belongs.

But when parents fail to enforce routines, expectations, or consequences at home, teachers are often told they should have done more. Accountability shifts downward, regardless of how little control the teacher actually has.

Boundaries and Consequences

And if a patient is consistently rude, disruptive, or abusive, they are dismissed from the practice. They have to find other options. Doctors are not required to continue serving them indefinitely. Boundaries exist, and they are enforced. Teachers never have that option.

Disruptive behavior is reframed as a classroom management issue. Teachers are told to build better relationships, try new strategies, and reflect more deeply, while remaining legally and professionally responsible for students they cannot remove, regardless of conduct.

The Training Stage Versus Professional Practice

To be clear, every profession has a training phase where close oversight is appropriate. Doctors are closely observed, monitored, and instructed while they are learning. Their decisions are reviewed. Their work is supervised. Mistakes are corrected in real time.

That is exactly how student teaching works. Student teachers are observed, coached, and mentored by experienced supervising teachers. They practice under guidance. They are still learning the profession.

Then something important happens. Doctors earn their license. At that point, constant observation ends. Micromanagement stops. They are trusted to do the job they were educated and trained to do. Their expertise is no longer perpetually questioned.

That transition never seems to happen in teaching. Even after teachers earn full licensure, after years of education, certification exams, student teaching, mentoring, and classroom experience, the scrutiny does not ease. Observations continue. Checklists remain. Micromanagement persists. Teachers are evaluated as if they are perpetually in training.

They are told how to phrase objectives, how to arrange desks, how to greet students, how to speak, how to stand, how to smile, and what to post on their walls. Their professionalism is constantly audited, as though competence must be re-proven year after year, and frankly, sometimes, week after week.

Why Teaching Is Treated Differently

In most professions, trust is the reward for experience and competency. In teaching, that is rarely the case. Why does this happen?

Part of it is perception. Schools are public-facing institutions under constant political and parental scrutiny. Administrators are often required to manage how decisions look to others as much as how effectively teaching and learning actually happen. As a result, administrators are frequently focused on avoiding complaints and controversy as much as supporting effective instruction.

Part of it is misplaced responsibility. When outcomes are poor, accountability is often directed at individual teachers rather than at broader factors such as policy decisions, funding limitations, class size, or systemic constraints that shape what happens in classrooms.

And part of it is cultural. Teaching is still widely viewed not simply as a profession, but as a calling. Because of that, teachers are often expected to give more of themselves, their time, and their resources out of personal devotion, rather than being supported through trust, clear boundaries, and professional respect afforded to other professions.

This pattern is not unique to teaching. Other professions long described as ‘being a calling,’ such as nursing, social work, clergy, and early childhood care, have faced similar expectations of self-sacrifice and limitless availability. In many of those fields, the consequences have been visible: burnout, workforce shortages, and pressure to lower standards in order to fill roles and maintain services.

Teaching remains one of the few professions where the language of it ‘being a calling’ is still routinely used to justify eroded boundaries, inadequate support, and the gradual weakening of professional standards, ultimately harming the profession as a whole.

The result is a profession where expertise never earns autonomy, boundaries are viewed as inconveniences, and disrespect is reframed as a personal failure rather than a behavioral one.

When Working With Children Becomes the Excuse

A common defense of how teachers are treated is that children are different; that managing behavior, emotions, and compliance makes teaching uniquely difficult and therefore uniquely subject to scrutiny. Teaching is often defended as uniquely different because it serves children. But that assumption does not hold up when we look at how other child-serving professions are actually treated.

Pediatric Dentistry and Professional Authority

Consider a pediatric dentist. Pediatric dentists routinely work with children who are scared, anxious, resistant, or openly uncooperative. They deal with crying, refusal, fear-driven behavior, and strong parental emotions in close quarters, often with safety risks far higher than those in a classroom.

Yet when a child refuses to open their mouth, the dentist is not blamed. The dentist is not told to try harder to build a relationship. They are not evaluated on whether their tone was warm enough. They are not asked to reflect on what they could have done differently.

If a child develops cavities because brushing does not happen consistently, the dentist is not held responsible. No one suggests the dentist needs additional training on how to teach daily hygiene habits. Responsibility is understood to lie with the routines outside the dental office. If a child is old enough, that responsibility rests with the child. If the child is too young to manage the task independently, it rests with the adults responsible for supervising and supporting it.

If a child becomes disruptive or unsafe, the appointment stops. Expectations are clear. Parents prepare the child, follow instructions at home, and respect professional boundaries. The dentist’s authority is not up for debate. Their expertise is trusted. Their time is protected.

The Double Standard Inside the Same Building

You can also consider a speech-language pathologist. Speech-language pathologists work directly with children, often those with learning differences, communication challenges, or behavioral difficulties. They build rapport, use evidence-based strategies, and track progress carefully.

But they are not endlessly accessible. Sessions have defined start and end times. Services are scheduled, not on demand outside of the pathologist’s working hours. When families fail to follow through, that noncompliance is documented. In some cases, services are reduced or discontinued.

Most importantly, speech-language pathologists are not blamed when progress stalls due to lack of support outside their sessions. Their professional judgment is respected.

What makes this comparison especially revealing is that many speech-language pathologists work in the very same buildings as teachers. Yet teachers are rarely afforded the same professional boundaries or autonomy.

Teachers are expected to manage every variable at once. They are held responsible not only for instruction, but also for behavior, emotional regulation, family follow-through, and outcomes well beyond their control. Disrespect is reframed as a classroom management failure. Lack of progress becomes a personal shortcoming.

Unlike dentists or speech-language pathologists, teachers are rarely allowed to pause, redirect, or refuse service when conditions become unreasonable. The issue is not that children are sometimes difficult. The issue is that teaching is one of the only child-serving professions where difficulty is used as justification for denying professional trust.

When Professional Trust Is Withheld

Doctors, dentists, speech-language pathologists, and other highly trained professionals are observed closely while they learn. Once licensed, they are trusted to make decisions within their expertise. Their professional judgment sets the boundaries of their work, and accountability is shared appropriately among all parties involved. But for some reason, teaching continues to be the exception.

Teachers are licensed, experienced, and highly trained, yet are subjected to ongoing scrutiny that would be unthinkable in other professions. Teachers are held responsible for outcomes shaped by factors far beyond their control, while their professional judgment is subject to constant interruption, evaluation, and revision by others. Their decisions are routinely questioned, their boundaries overridden, and their responsibilities expanded far beyond a reasonable scope.

If we want better outcomes for students, the answer is not more micromanagement of teachers. It is recognizing that professional trust is not optional. It is essential.

If you are interested in the issues that are important in reviving our education system, you might want to consider Why More Money Will Not Fix Teaching – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life.

You also might want to read The Quiet Heart of Teacher Burnout – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life, which discusses how teachers are often complicit in some aspects of teacher burnout, simply by being too ‘agreeable.’

You might also enjoy a discussion on how ‘scripted instruction’ is minimizing students’ learning experiences and reducing the quality of education they receive. To learn more, go to Teaching Without Trust: How Scripted Lessons Undermine Learning – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life.

Why More Money Will Not Fix Teaching

Image of an exhausted, overwhelmed teacher sitting in a classroom after hours, with stacks of papers and grading that needs her attention, but she's just too tired. The text says, "Teachers are not leaving because they hate teaching. They are leaving because the day-to-day reality has become unsustainable."

The call to “just pay teachers more” is often offered as a simple solution to a complex problem. Teachers do deserve higher pay. That is not in question. What is missing from this conversation is an honest look at the daily conditions that are driving educators out of the profession. Salary alone does not address those realities.

Teacher burnout is not simply about pay or workload. It is about being wired to give in a system that is wired to take. Teachers are not burning out because they lack commitment. They are burning out because they care deeply in a culture that treats constant overextension as the baseline expectation.

A typical teaching day requires standing and moving for hours at a time, often six or more, while maintaining constant attention and control. Many teachers have little or no uninterrupted planning time built into their day. Even when preparation periods exist on paper, they are frequently consumed by meetings, coverage duties, or administrative tasks. Teaching is not a job that allows for mental rest during the workday. There is no pause button.

At any given moment, a teacher is managing instruction, behavior, time, and safety simultaneously. An announcement interrupts the lesson. A student packs up loudly for an early dismissal and asks what the homework is. Teaching stops to answer the question. A special education teacher enters to work with a small group of students and begins explaining directions in a voice loud enough to pull attention away from the main lesson. The classroom teacher pauses again when asked to repeat what was taught during that interruption. Nearby students lose focus and begin distracting or taunting one another. The teacher intervenes, redirects, and attempts to resume instruction, knowing that momentum has already been lost. These are not daily occurrences, but hourly occurrences that leave the teacher stressed and frustrated, but are also things over which the teacher has no control.

This level of constant stimulation is relentless. It requires sustained concentration, emotional regulation, and split-second decision-making for hours at a time. There is no quiet. There is no single task. There is no opportunity to focus on one thing from start to finish. By the end of the day, mental exhaustion is not a side effect of teaching; it is a predictable outcome.

Layered onto this cognitive load is the steady erosion of authority. Gone are the days when a teacher could send a disruptive student to the office and continue teaching. In many schools, that option no longer exists. Teachers are required to call the main office, explain the situation, and wait while their instruction is disrupted for the entire class. Even when a student is removed for behavior that is destructive or unsafe, the removal is often brief. The student may return shortly afterward, sometimes with a snack, instructed to offer an apology that everyone understands is insincere, and placed right back into the same environment where the behavior began. Frequently, the behavior resumes or escalates because students come to realize there are no real consequences.

When teachers enforce behavior policies that administrators themselves have established, those policies often remain in place only until a vocal parent objects. Once a persistent or demanding parent becomes involved, administrators may quietly reverse direction. Teachers are then instructed to handle the situation differently in the future, without any public clarification or visible support. The result is that the teacher appears unreasonable or incompetent, with diminished authority and no clear way to manage future concerns with that family. When parents openly share that they succeeded in having a teacher’s decision overturned, it further undermines the teacher’s credibility with other families as well.  It also signals to others that policies are negotiable and that teacher authority can be bypassed.

At the same time, teachers are experiencing a similar loss of authority over instruction. Educators study child development, pedagogy, assessment, and learning theory. They understand how instruction must be adapted to meet students where they are. Yet in practice, teachers are frequently told to ignore that expertise.

Many are required to teach using methods they know are not developmentally appropriate. They raise concerns and explain why certain approaches will not work. Those concerns are dismissed in favor of programs marketed as research-based or proven, even when those claims rely on narrow evidence or have been challenged by broader research. Once districts or administrators commit to a program, questioning it becomes unacceptable. Teachers are expected to implement it enthusiastically, even when early results confirm exactly what they warned would happen.

When the approach fails, responsibility rarely falls on the program itself. Teachers are told they did not implement it correctly, that they need more training, or that they must reflect on what they could have done differently. The outcome they predicted becomes their burden to fix.

This creates a constant state of upheaval. Instructional methods shift regularly, often driven by trends, vendors, or leadership changes rather than classroom reality. Teachers are expected to adapt instantly, without complaint, and without acknowledgment of their professional judgment. Highly educated professionals are hired for their expertise and then repeatedly instructed to work against it.

No amount of money compensates for this combination of physical fatigue, cognitive overload, and professional disrespect. Higher pay does not reduce sensory overload. It does not eliminate constant interruptions. It does not restore authority that has been systematically undermined. It does not remove the strain of being held accountable for outcomes while being denied meaningful control over the conditions that produce them.

Teachers are not leaving because they hate teaching. They are leaving because the day-to-day reality has become unsustainable. Responsibility continues to increase while trust, autonomy, and support continue to shrink.

Paying teachers more matters, but it cannot be the end of the conversation. Real change requires restoring authority in classrooms, respecting professional judgment, and creating conditions that allow teachers to do the work they were trained to do. Until those changes occur, higher salaries may slow the exodus, but they will not stop it.

Teaching has problems that money alone will not fix. And yet, instead of addressing those problems by improving working conditions, restoring authority, providing meaningful support, or even increasing pay, many districts have chosen a different solution entirely. They are lowering the bar to enter the profession.

Across the country, requirements for teachers and substitutes are being reduced in response to staffing shortages. Temporary and emergency licenses are increasingly common. Many individuals with no formal training in education are allowed to lead classrooms while being told they can learn how to teach later. In some cases, they are given a year or two to take a handful of education courses while continuing to teach full-time. Subject mastery is often assessed through a multiple-choice exam on material they are already responsible for teaching, regardless of whether they have ever studied it in depth themselves.

The standards for substitute teachers have dropped even further. In many districts, the only requirements are that a person be at least twenty-one years old, hold a high school diploma, and have no felony convictions. That is the entire bar. As a result, substitutes are routinely placed in classrooms teaching advanced subjects they have never taken, let alone mastered. This is not a criticism of those individuals, many of whom are doing their best in impossible situations. It is a critique of a system that treats teaching as something anyone can step into without preparation.

The message this sends to trained, experienced educators is devastating. Teachers are told they are professionals, yet their expertise is ignored. They are held to high standards of accountability, while untrained replacements are brought in under dramatically lower expectations. The work remains complex, demanding, and high-stakes, but the profession itself is increasingly treated as interchangeable labor.

This approach does not fix burnout. It accelerates it. When districts respond to teacher attrition by devaluing the profession rather than improving it, they confirm what many educators already feel. The problem is not a lack of qualified people willing and able to teach. The problem is a system that refuses to make teaching a sustainable profession for those who are qualified, educated, and committed to doing it well.

Author’s Note: Yes, teachers deserve better pay. That matters. This post is about the reality that salary alone does not address the loss of authority, constant disruption, and lack of professional trust that many teachers experience daily.

Just to be clear, this isn’t about blaming individual teachers, students, or parents. It isn’t about blaming administrators. It’s about the day-to-day conditions that make teaching increasingly unsustainable. Many educators love the work itself. It’s the systems around the work that are breaking people down.

And if you have never taught, consider this an invitation to listen. These are not hypotheticals or worst-case scenarios. They are everyday realities in many classrooms.

If you find yourself thinking about “the way things were” when you were young, I encourage you to read The Good Old Days — But for Whom?  When Schools Changed: The Forgotten Truth About Inclusion and Exclusion fore special education % – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life . It offers important context for why today’s classrooms look so different.

We cannot go back to “the way things were” any more than we can abandon cars and return to horse-drawn transportation, or stop buying clothing and go back to purchasing bolts of fabric, needles, and thread, or even weaving our own cloth. The idea may sound appealing at first, until you remember what it actually required, who was left out, and what progress would be undone in the process.

The Quiet Heart of Teacher Burnout

The Hidden Cost of Being Too Agreeable

Image of an exhausted, overwhelmed teacher who is feeling burned out.

As a whole, teachers tend to be too agreeable by nature. It is often their strongest asset, but also their greatest weakness. Most teachers I’ve known, myself included, rank high in what psychologists call agreeableness. Caring, empathy, cooperation, and a strong sense of responsibility are hallmarks of this trait. These are the same qualities that make teachers exceptional at what they do. They build trust with students, bring warmth into their classrooms, and create learning environments where children feel seen and valued.

But those same virtues can easily turn into traps. Agreeable, empathetic people often struggle to set boundaries. We have a hard time saying no, especially when someone else needs help. I can’t count how many times I stayed late to organize materials, took home extra work, or volunteered for one more committee because no one else raised a hand. I told myself I was being a team player, but really, I was depleting my own reserves.

At first, that kind of constant giving looks like dedication. Administrators praise it. Colleagues admire it. Parents appreciate it. Students benefit from it. But over time, that steady stream of self-sacrifice turns into exhaustion. The body and spirit start to protest. For teachers, burnout is rarely just about the number of papers to grade or lessons to plan. It’s about being wired to ‘give’ in a system that is wired to ‘take’.

Agreeable, empathetic teachers have a tendency to overextend. Administrators, intentionally or not, have a tendency to lean on those same teachers until “going above and beyond” becomes the new normal. Once that happens, being overburdened stops being a choice and becomes an expectation. That’s the quiet heart of teacher burnout.

The workload alone is monumental. The sheer number of meetings, lesson plans, and individualized accommodations can feel endless. There’s the preparation of engaging lessons, the paperwork that must be completed while simultaneously managing a room of twenty-five children, and the expectation to maintain discipline in a system that often limits a teacher’s authority to do so. And yet, for the teacher who feels responsible for everyone and everything, even this heavy load somehow expands. Extra tasks get piled on because agreeable people rarely push back. Eventually, the weight becomes unsustainable.

When the expectation to do the impossible collides with a teacher’s inner drive to give their best, the result is painful. Teachers begin to burn out, not because they stop caring, but because they care too much for too long without protection. They start to pull back, telling themselves they will do less, care less, or only meet the bare minimum. The tragedy is that most of them are not built that way. Their hearts are wired to give, even when giving has begun to cost too much. Even when they succeed at ‘giving less,’ it feels like a silent failure. 

Teachers don’t need to care less. They don’t need to become hardened or indifferent. What they need is protection from being overused. Schools must begin to value boundaries as much as compassion, and leaders must understand that protecting a teacher’s energy is not indulgence; it is preservation.

At the end of the day, the solution is not to make teachers tougher, but to make teaching more humane. We cannot keep expecting teachers to give until they have nothing left, and then make that the basic expectation. The system itself must change.

Education will thrive when compassion is met with respect, when effort is balanced with support, and when giving until you have nothing left to give stops being the expectation!  The best teachers are not those who give until there is nothing left, but those who are given the space, time, and understanding to keep their light burning. Protecting that light is how we protect the very soul of education itself.  We can’t keep calling exhaustion “dedication.” It’s time to protect the people who make education possible.

Here are some other teaching articles you might enjoy.

When Passion Isn’t Enough: The Unraveling of Teaching – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Teaching Without Trust: How Scripted Lessons Undermine Learning – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

If you’ve decided that it is time to get out of teaching, you might want to check out my book, Classroom to Corporate on Amazon.

Classroom to Corporate: How to Translate Your Teaching Experience into a Powerful Corporate Resume: Mariet, Jan: 9798280322257: Amazon.com: Books

Let’s start a conversation about how to reduce teacher burnout. What are your thoughts on the subject? Leave a response in the comments section.

Why Early Printing Instruction Matters

Over the years, I noticed something subtle but troubling in my classroom.
Each new group of students seemed to struggle more with printing than the one before. Letters were uneven, reversed, or oversized. Many couldn’t fit words on the line. Others inexplicably mixed lowercase and capital letters within words, and used wildly inaccurate sizing of lowercase letters. Some held pencils so awkwardly that writing even a short paragraph felt exhausting.

I taught mostly third and fourth grade, so by the time students reached my classroom, they should have already mastered printing. They should have been able to print quickly, accurately, and legibly. Yet, year after year, I found that at least one-third of my fourth graders could not do this. These were not students with diagnosed learning disabilities or special needs. Many of them did very well in other subjects. Their struggle lay in the basics of printing because they had learned with tracer sheets instead of through explicit modeling of letter formation, guided practice, and real-time feedback. As a result, they never developed the long-term ability to make printed letters of the correct size and shape, or to use the correct directionality to write quickly and accurately. The basic motor patterns of printing never became automatic.

Early-Grade Printing Instruction Seems to Be Declining

There is growing evidence that explicit instruction in letter formation, the kind that fosters automatic, fluent printing, is often missing or minimized in many classrooms today. Historically, printing (manuscript writing) was typically taught in first grade, with cursive introduced later.

But as classrooms have shifted toward digital learning, keyboarding, and typing as early as first and second grade, the time allocated for manual letter formation has diminished considerably. Since districts and even entire states determine how much time can be spent on each subject, teachers have little control over these priorities. It is easy to say, “Go back to explicit instruction with real-time feedback,” but if that instructional time has already been reassigned to other mandated subjects, teachers simply cannot make more time to teach printing skills effectively.

Recent classroom studies confirm this trend. Observations in early-grade classrooms show limited use of research-based practices that support fluent printing, such as modeling pencil grip and letter formation strokes, providing guided practice, offering corrective real-time feedback, and giving students repeated opportunities to copy letters and then write them from memory.

Programs designed to support printing fluency emphasize that these components — modeling, guided practice, feedback, and varied repetition — are essential if students are to internalize motor patterns and produce legible, automatic printing.

Because printing is not a skill that can be easily measured by standardized testing, and because schools are heavily focused on data collection, explicit instruction in printing has steadily declined. It is unlikely to see a resurgence without a major shift away from the test-driven culture that dominates education today.

Unfortunately, when schools rely on detached methods such as tracer sheets (with little direct teacher observation or real-time feedback), children may visually imitate letter shapes but fail to internalize the correct motion or muscle memory. Without that, printing often remains slow, labored, and error-prone.

The Reality of the Modern Classroom

In most early-grade classrooms, the structure of the day makes this problem even more complicated. While teachers work with a small guided reading group of four to six students, the rest of the class is expected to work independently. This is often when children are given tracer sheets to “practice” printing.

The intention is good—keeping students meaningfully occupied while the teacher provides targeted reading instruction—but the result is that no one is actually observing how those students are forming their letters. Without direct supervision or real-time feedback, students can repeat the same mistakes over and over, solidifying incorrect habits that become nearly impossible to unlearn.

Many children appear busy and compliant during this time, carefully tracing rows of letters. Yet, because no one is watching to correct pencil grip, letter direction, or spacing, their practice time often reinforces poor motor patterns instead of improving them. This cycle repeats across weeks, months, and even years, leaving teachers in later grades to discover that many students can’t print legibly despite years of “practice.”

Why This Matters for Older Students

Because early printing instruction is often superficial or unsupervised, many children reach upper elementary grades without a solid foundation. When printing remains effortful rather than automatic, legibility suffers. This becomes especially problematic when students are expected to write paragraphs, take notes, complete written assignments, or express complex ideas—skills that depend on fluency as much as comprehension.

In my third and fourth grade classrooms, I repeatedly observed that about one-third of fourth graders struggled with basic printing skills. This was not because they lacked intelligence or motivation, but because the fundamental motor patterns had never been taught, practiced, and reinforced.

Writing Development

Decades of research on early writing development strongly support explicit, systematic instruction in letter formation. Key components include:

  • Teacher modeling of the correct pencil grasp, posture, paper position, and letter formation strokes for a sufficient amount of time and duration for these skills to be used with automaticity.
  • Guided practice with visual cues such as arrowed stroke directions and starting-point dots, followed by copying and then writing from memory.  If students are not directly observed to make certain they are starting at the correct starting point, and moving smoothly in the correct direction, the instruction fails from the very beginning.
  • Frequent, brief printing lessons with consistent feedback rather than occasional or worksheet-only practice is essential to developing necessary printing skills.
  • Direct observation by the teacher while students print, allowing for immediate correction and reinforcement of directionality, shape, and size, while time and effort-consuming, is essential to developing smooth, automatic, and legible printing skills. 

Such instruction helps children form stable, automatic motor patterns for letter formation, which supports legibility, writing fluency, spelling, and reading. Ultimately, it allows students to express ideas freely instead of being limited by awkward, inefficient printing.

Conclusion: What We Must Ask Ourselves

If schools replace early manual printing instruction with keyboarding and technology, and rely on tracer sheets instead of guided, explicit teaching, they risk shortchanging many students. This is not to say that both technology and explicit manual instruction are not important. It is simply important to change the trend that has reduced instructional time devoted to writing development, often at the cost of students being able to write fluently.

As a teacher of third and fourth graders, I saw the results firsthand: bright, capable students who struggled simply because printing had never been taught properly.

If we truly believe that clear, fluent writing, whether manual or digital, is part of literacy, then we must ensure that early-grade classrooms include intentional, high-quality printing instruction, not automated worksheets or superficial practice.

Printing is more than a mechanical exercise. When taught correctly, it builds muscle memory, fine motor coordination, and confidence. And when practiced with care and consistency, it fosters clarity in both writing and thinking.

Postnote: Why Moving to Cursive Too Soon Doesn’t Work

Some advocate for an early transition to cursive, but introducing cursive instruction when as many as one-third of students have not yet mastered printing sets them up for frustration rather than success. Cursive relies on the same foundational motor patterns as printing. When those patterns are incomplete or inconsistent, students struggle to form letters, connect strokes, and maintain legibility in motion.

Skipping or rushing the mastery of printing is like asking a child to run before learning to walk. Until printing becomes fluent and automatic, cursive will only compound the problem.

For more on this issue, see my related article, Bringing Cursive Back Sounds Nice, But Is It Really Worth It? at https://janmariet.com/why-bringing-cursive-back-to-schools-wont-work/

Author’s Note:
Jan Mariet is a veteran teacher and writer who spent nearly two decades in public education before turning her focus to writing about teaching, disability, and social change. Her work explores how classrooms, communities, and expectations have evolved, and what we have gained and lost along the way.

Bringing Cursive Back Sounds Nice, But Is It Really Worth It?

I was in third and fourth grade in the late 1960s, back when learning cursive was a rite of passage. We practiced loops and swirls on lined paper, filled pages with capital Qs that looked like 2s, and took pride when our handwriting looked “grown up.” It was part of being educated, part of becoming someone who could write a letter, sign a check, or leave a note your mother could actually read.

Fast forward several decades. I became a certified elementary teacher in 2001 in Virginia. By that point, the teaching landscape had completely changed. Teacher certification programs, the equivalent of a bachelor’s or master’s degree in elementary education, no longer included handwriting instruction. Not manuscript, and certainly not cursive.

From 2002 through 2019, not a single public school I worked in required cursive writing or provided any materials or curriculum for it. None. Teachers who began their careers after 2001 were never taught how to teach cursive. Many of the younger teachers I worked alongside didn’t know how to write in cursive themselves. So even when cursive was mentioned as something “nice to bring back,” it simply wasn’t possible. You cannot teach a skill you do not have.

Now, several states, including Florida, have reintroduced cursive into their standards. On paper, it sounds traditional and wholesome, a nod to the “good old days.” But there is a major problem no one seems to be addressing: who is going to teach it?

The majority of teachers currently in second through fourth grade classrooms never learned cursive formally. They never practiced the proper strokes, letter connections, or spacing. They have spent their careers teaching literacy through keyboards, tablets, and typed text. Simply placing “cursive writing” back into the curriculum does not magically equip teachers with the skills or time to teach it.

And the most common argument for bringing cursive back, so that students can “read historical documents like the U.S. Constitution,” does not hold up to scrutiny.

Why the “Historical Documents” Argument Falls Short

(Source: Smithsonian Historical Society Records)

When people argue that students must learn cursive so they can read historical documents, they usually mean a small handful of famous ones. The Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are almost always at the top of that list. Sometimes people also mention the Federalist Papers, the Gettysburg Address, or Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

There is no doubt these documents are important, but the argument falls apart when you look at them closely. All of these were written with quills in the late 1700s or mid-1800s, using elaborate handwriting styles that no longer exist. The letter shapes, spacing, and flourishes look beautiful, but they bear little resemblance to the Palmer, Zaner-Bloser, or D’Nealian cursive styles taught in 20th-century classrooms. Many of the letters are formed differently, and some are no longer in use. The “long s,” for example, looks like an “f” and appears throughout the Declaration of Independence.

Even most adults who learned cursive would struggle to read those documents fluently without a transcription beside them. Museums, archives, and textbooks do not expect visitors or students to read the original versions. They provide typed, printed, or digital transcriptions so the words can be understood clearly.

In truth, the ability to read historical documents depends far more on historical literacy than on handwriting style. Understanding the context, purpose, and ideas behind those writings is what matters most. And for the rare cases when someone truly needs to see the original script, modern technology can instantly translate cursive text into print. A quick photo on a phone can produce a clean, readable version within seconds.

So while the idea of reading the Constitution in its original cursive form might sound noble, it is not realistic. What we really need to teach students is how to understand what those words meant, why they were written, and how they continue to shape the world they live in today.

There is another practical reason the argument for cursive no longer makes sense. We no longer live in a world that requires a cursive signature. There was a time when your signature was a personal stamp, a mark of identity that proved who you were. You needed it for checks, contracts, and anything official. Today, most financial and legal documents are handled electronically. We sign digitally with a mouse, a fingertip, or an auto-generated font. Even when a physical signature is required, it does not have to be written in cursive. You can print your name, or make a simple squiggle, and it is still legally valid. The idea that students need cursive in order to sign their names no longer matches reality. The world has changed, and the way we write has changed with it.

That does not mean handwriting itself is unimportant. Writing by hand helps with memory, fine motor skills, and even creativity. But insisting that cursive return to classrooms without training, time, or relevance does not bring us back to the “good old days.” It only adds another unrealistic expectation to already overburdened teachers.

The truth is, cursive is not coming back. Not really. What is coming back is the idea of cursive, the nostalgia of it, in a world that has long since moved on from fountain pens and lined practice sheets. And for those of us who once filled pages with careful loops and curls, that realization is both a little sad and entirely understandable.

Postnote: Why Printing Must Come First

Before schools rush to reintroduce cursive writing, it is worth asking a simple question: have students truly mastered printing?

In many classrooms, the answer is no. When students struggle with letter formation, spacing, or directionality in print, moving to cursive only adds frustration and confusion. To understand why so many students reach upper elementary grades without legible and fluent printing, and what schools can do to fix it, read my companion piece, “Illegible Printing and Why Early Printing Instruction Matters” at https://janmariet.com/illegible-printing-and-why-early-printing-instruction-matters/

Author’s Note:
Jan Mariet is a veteran teacher and writer who spent nearly two decades in public education before turning her focus to writing about teaching, disability, and social change. Her work explores how classrooms, communities, and expectations have evolved, and what we have gained and lost along the way.

Teaching Without Trust: How Scripted Lessons Undermine Learning

Asking teachers to read directly from a scripted curriculum is like asking artists to ‘paint by numbers.’

Schools and school districts spend a lot of money on scripted curricula. They often tout that these scripts make sure every student learns the same material in the same way. Some people defend scripted lessons. They say, “It saves teachers time.” “You don’t have to be an expert to teach it.” “Parents and administrators can relax knowing everyone’s teaching the same thing.” They only see the positive side.

But those who support scripted curricula often overlook the many negatives — the ways that teaching from scripts minimizes students’ learning experiences and reduces the quality of education they receive.

Teachers are trained professionals who spend four to six years, at minimum, learning how to design lessons that meet the needs of all learners. Teachers understand a basic truth: what works beautifully for one group of students might fall flat or completely fail with another. Every class has its own rhythm, interests, and challenges. Different groups have different levels of background knowledge, learning styles, and ways of engaging with the material.

Scripted lessons often teach to the “average” student, completely missing the mark for those who need more challenge or additional support. They also assume that every student begins with the same background knowledge, which is rarely the case.

Background knowledge refers to the information, experiences, and vocabulary that students bring with them to the classroom. For example, students who live in inner-city environments may have little experience with rural life, while those in rural areas may not understand urban experiences. Urban students may not relate to tractors, livestock, or harvesters. Rural students may struggle to imagine riding a subway, taking a taxi to school, or living in a high-rise apartment. Scripted lessons ignore these differences and assume that every child shares the same frame of reference.

When teachers are required to read from scripts, it lowers teaching to the lowest common denominator. It sends the message that teachers cannot be relied upon to provide engaging, intellectually stimulating instruction without reading from a prewritten script or that they are not professionally knowledgeable enough to do so. It also makes the unfair assumption that teachers have hidden agendas or are trying to do something inappropriate in the classroom.

Most of all, it implies that teachers cannot be trusted to teach accurately and must be controlled by others “higher up” in order to do their jobs correctly. This approach allows administrators and community members with particular agendas to dictate exactly what is said and how it is said in every classroom. It creates a system built on micromanagement rather than professional trust, reducing teachers to mere ‘script readers’ instead of skilled professionals.

Scripts also prevent what teachers call teachable moments. These are the times when a student asks an insightful question or makes a thoughtful observation that opens the door to deeper learning. These moments are often the most powerful and memorable parts of education. Scripted lessons destroy them by requiring teachers to stay on the page instead of following genuine curiosity and discovery.

When a teacher is required to use a program exactly as written, without any changes or adaptations, it is called “teaching with fidelity.” When teaching is reduced to reading word-for-word from a script, with no differentiation, no enrichment, and no flexibility, we might as well have students listen to a recording. It strips away the teacher’s unique contributions—their knowledge, creativity, and ability to connect lessons to students’ lives. It removes everything that makes learning meaningful and memorable.

I once worked in a school that required us to follow five separate language arts scripts within a single 1 hour and 50 minute reading block, timed down to the minute. Four minutes for one program, twelve for the next, and so on. If a student did not understand something, we were told simply to reread the section of the script, not to explain it in another way that might actually help them. To keep students “engaged,” we were told to have them move between the carpet and their desks between scripts. This was supposed to provide movement and reduce boredom, but it did little to achieve either.

We were required to follow these scripts “with fidelity,” meaning no changes, no additions, no enrichment, and definitely no creativity.

And for anyone who believes this approach saves time, it does not. We still had to write complete lesson plans with learning objectives, standards, assessments, and reteaching plans, even though we could not use our own ideas. We could not simply note the assigned page numbers or materials. Each week, teachers were still required to submit detailed six-page lesson plans by Friday afternoon.

If scripted lessons are truly the best way to teach, then why not sit students in front of a screen and have them watch one teacher read the script written for the entire nation? Because that is not how children learn. Real learning happens when a trained, experienced teacher observes how students respond, adjusts in the moment, reacts and reteaches based on student questions, and finds creative ways to make lessons engaging and relevant.

Teaching is both an art and a science. Scripts take away both.
When teachers are trusted to teach authentically, they bring lessons to life. They build curiosity, adapt to each student’s needs, and create connections that last long after the test is over. The best classrooms are living, breathing spaces where knowledge grows through interaction, trust, and discovery, not through reciting someone else’s words.

The Good Old Days — But for Whom?  When Schools Changed: The Forgotten Truth About Inclusion and Exclusion

The Forgotten Truth About Inclusion and Exclusion

1960s class on the front steps to the school, with the teacher and principal standing in the background. There are no disabled students in this picture. Schools in the 1960s didn't have ramps or any accessibility features.

People love to talk about how much better schools were “back in the day.” They remember the 1950s through the early 1970s as an age of discipline, manners, and respect for teachers. But that nostalgia leaves out the children who weren’t there at all, and the harsh realities for those who didn’t fit the mold.

Who Wasn’t in the Classroom

Before 1975, most public schools set IQ cutoffs for attendance. Many districts refused enrollment to children whose IQs fell below 70, labeling them “uneducable” or simply “trainable.” Those children were often sent to state institutions or “training schools” designed to teach simple, repetitive tasks like folding towels or sorting utensils, not reading, writing, or math. Others stayed home entirely.

Students who were blind, deaf, or physically disabled were typically sent to special residential schools, often far from their families. Parents might see them only on weekends or holidays. And because public buildings were not required to be accessible, even mildly disabled children were shut out of neighborhood schools. There were no ramps, elevators, or adaptive devices. Bathrooms were inaccessible, and classrooms were packed tightly with rows of desks, leaving no space for mobility aids or wheelchairs.

Institutionalization and the Lost Generation

Conditions in many institutions were bleak. Children labeled “mentally retarded” or “behaviorally disturbed” often lived in overcrowded, understaffed facilities. Education was minimal, if it existed at all. Some were restrained, neglected, or warehoused for life. The heartbreaking images later released from places like Willowbrook State School revealed just how far from “the good old days” those years really were. (Read the endnote on the Dark Legacy of Willowbrook for more information on the Willowbrook State School.) 

The Illusion of Order

In regular classrooms, order and conformity were valued above all else. Corporal punishment was common. Children were expected to sit still, memorize, and obey. Those who could not were labeled as defiant or lazy, when in reality many had undiagnosed conditions such as ADHD, autism, or dyslexia.

Gifted children often struggled too. Those who thought creatively or challenged ideas were seen as troublemakers. If they finished their work quickly or questioned teachers, they were accused of showing off. Some were pushed ahead a grade or two based solely on academic performance, even though they were not emotionally ready for that leap. Many of these bright but misunderstood students eventually became alienated and dropped out of school completely.

Grouping and “Tracking”

By the 1960s, many schools used ability grouping, or “tracking.” Students were sorted into high, middle, or low groups based on IQ scores or test performance.

  • The “high” group, usually made up of middle-class white students, thrived under challenging work and high expectations.
  • The “middle” group received average instruction and maintained steady progress.
  • The “low” group was assigned remedial work with minimal expectations. These classes were often led by teachers who were inexperienced, struggling professionally, or approaching retirement and worn down by years of classroom stress. The message to those students was clear: no one expected much.

What was meant to streamline instruction ended up boxing students in instead. Students rarely moved between groups, and those in the lowest tracks often stayed there for their entire schooling. Many of these children had undiagnosed learning disabilities that would not be recognized until years later.

The Struggle Toward Inclusion

When the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142) passed in 1975, it promised to change everything. But early implementation was chaotic. Students with widely different needs, physical disabilities, developmental delays, emotional disorders, and learning challenges were lumped together in “special education” rooms at the end of the hall. Teachers had little training and no aides. When behavior or frustration escalated, some schools relied on isolation boxes or padded “quiet rooms,” believing these were therapeutic. They were not. They were contained.

The Evolution and Reality of Special Education Teachers

When special education first appeared in public schools in the 1970s, there was no clear model to follow. Many of the first special education classrooms were staffed by teachers who had general education or psychology backgrounds but no formal training in disabilities. Some came from social work or medical settings, bringing compassion but little classroom experience. Others were simply reassigned from general education because the principal thought they were patient, nurturing, or ready for an easier role near retirement.

As the field developed through the late 1970s and 1980s, universities began creating special education degree programs that focused on behavioral management, individualized instruction, and legal compliance. Special education teachers became trained professionals with specific credentials, expected to write Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), modify instruction, and collaborate with general education teachers.

Today, certification standards are far more rigorous, yet the reality is harder than ever. Special education teachers are pulled in every direction — co-teaching in general education classrooms, running small pull-out groups, attending IEP meetings, documenting progress, and providing accommodations for dozens of students with very different needs. Paperwork alone can consume more than half their work week.

Meanwhile, there is a national shortage of qualified special education teachers. Many schools rely on paraprofessionals (paras) to provide in-class support. These paras are often kind, patient, and dedicated, but few have specialized training in autism, learning disabilities, or emotional and behavioral disorders. In some classrooms, a single para may be responsible for several students at once, all with unique needs.

As a result, many students who are legally entitled to a set number of instructional or support “minutes” under their IEPs never receive them. Teachers are pulled to cover other duties, and the general education teacher is left trying to fill the gap, juggling 20 to 30 other students while also providing accommodations they were never trained to deliver.

Most general education teachers take only one introductory course on special education during college. It is often an inspirational overview about inclusion and empathy, not a hands-on course about how to implement an IEP, collect data, or write modifications that actually work.

To make matters worse, general education teachers and special education teachers almost never have time to plan together. The classroom teacher’s planning period is scheduled during the school day, but during that same time the special education teacher is usually attending IEP meetings, handling crises, or providing pull-out instruction. Without this collaboration, the co-teaching model — which depends on communication and joint planning — falls apart before it even begins.

Today’s Challenge

Now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Many schools are so afraid of lawsuits or compliance violations that they push full inclusion, even when it is not appropriate. Students with severe behavioral, cognitive, or emotional challenges are placed in general education classrooms without the supports they need to succeed. Teachers are expected to differentiate instruction for every student, often without additional help.

The result is that no one gets what they truly need. Struggling students flounder, advanced students wait, and teachers — both general and special education — feel defeated.

Finding the Middle Ground

The history of special education is not a straight path from wrong to right. It is a story of overcorrections and unintended consequences.
We have moved from exclusion to inclusion, but we still have not achieved integration — the balance point where every child has access, support, and belonging.

The “good old days” were not good for everyone. But remembering who was left out helps us see how far we have come, as well as how far we still have to go.

Endnote: The Dark Legacy of Willowbrook

Willowbrook State School, located on Staten Island in New York, opened in 1947 as a state-run institution for children and adults with intellectual disabilities. It was built to hold about 4,000 residents but soon housed more than 6,000. Overcrowding, neglect, and a lack of funding turned it into a warehouse for people society preferred not to see.

Most residents lived in large wards with rows of metal beds, few clothes, and almost no personal space. Many were left unattended for hours, sitting or lying on the floor. Education and therapy were virtually nonexistent. Those who could have lived with family or in the community had no such option, since community-based programs did not yet exist.

In 1972, television reporter Geraldo Rivera exposed the conditions in a shocking investigative report called “Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace.” Hidden cameras revealed children rocking on the floor, smeared with filth, and overworked attendants struggling to care for dozens of residents at once. The report horrified viewers and forced the public to confront the reality of institutional “care.”

Even more disturbing, it later came to light that some residents were used in unethical medical experiments during the 1950s and 60s. Researchers intentionally infected children with hepatitis, claiming it was justified because the disease already spread rapidly inside the overcrowded facility.

The public outrage that followed helped fuel the disability rights movement and the deinstitutionalization of the 1970s and 80s. A class-action lawsuit in 1975 led to the closure of Willowbrook and the relocation of residents into smaller community homes.

Willowbrook finally closed in 1987, but its legacy remains a reminder of what can happen when people with disabilities are isolated, undervalued, or forgotten. Its exposure helped pave the way for the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 and, later, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; laws that moved the country toward inclusion, accountability, and basic human dignity for all.

If you would like to see Geraldo Rivera’s documentary, Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace in its entirety, you can visit this non-affiliated link.

(NOTE: TRIGGER WARNING – this video is very disturbing. I remember when it was first shown back in 1972 it was very controversial to show such a disturbing video on television.)

1972. Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace, Geraldo Rivera’s original expose – YouTube

If you’d like to know more about what led me to write this story, please take a look at Why I Wrote “The Good Old Days – But For Whom” – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life .

Skirts, Sneakers, & Sports

How Things Have Changed for Girls in the Past 50 Years

Sometimes, I look back and realize just how many quiet revolutions I’ve lived through. They weren’t the kind that make headlines, but the kind that change how ordinary people live, dress, and think. When I think back to how things were 50-60 years ago for girls in school, I am surprised by how many things we took for granted as just being ‘the way things were’ and never even realized we were a part of a cultural revolution.

Before the mid-1970s, Girls Were Only Allowed to Wear Dresses or Skirts.
A Typical Late 1960s Classroom. Girls had to wear dresses or a skirt and blouse. No one could wear gym shoes except during gym class. Boys had to wear a belt.

I remember in the 1960s when girls could only wear skirts or dresses to school. Around 1970, girls were finally allowed to wear pants, but only if they were part of a “pantsuit.” In the mid-1970s, girls could finally wear jeans (or “dungarees,” as the teachers called them, but there were strict rules. They couldn’t be faded, torn, patched, or rolled at the cuffs. They also had to be in a “girls’ style,” meaning they were cut more like dress pants made from denim. “Girls’ Style Jeans” really looked more like dress pants made out of denim than what we now call ‘jeans.’

Girls’ Pantsuits Were the Only Pants We Could Wear to School and That Didn’t Happen Until 1970

Even gym class was different for girls. It wasn’t called PE back then. Boys’ and girls’ gym classes were separate until the late 1970s. Girls had to wear one-piece gym suits that zipped up and had darts in the front so we would look “ladylike,” while boys wore shorts and T-shirts. Even our gym shoes were regulated. We had to wear “girls’ gym shoes,” thin white or blue canvas sneakers with almost no support. When schools finally allowed us to wear the sturdier “boys’ gym shoes,” those delicate versions disappeared almost overnight.

The Typical Girl’s Gym Suit in the 1960s & 1970s
Girl’s Gym Shoes
Boys’ Gym Shoes (Girls Were Finally Allowed to Wear These in 1975. I had this exact pair.

About the only time junior high and high school age students were in gym together was for the infamous square-dancing classes we had to take. We had our first square-dancing class in fourth grade, and eighth grade was the last year we were forced to do this. Sometimes, there were more girls than boys, so girls would have to partner with another girl. It was a strict, but unwritten rule, that two girls could dance together, but two boys never could.

Until I was in ninth grade, we had separate gyms for boys and girls. I never saw the boys’ gym until ninth grade, when classes became co-ed. Even then, the difference was obvious. The boys’ gym was large, with a full basketball court, polished hardwood floors, bold court lines, and bleachers on both sides. The girls’ gym was only a half-court with a composite floor and faint paint lines. The basketball nets were lower and usually cranked up out of the way. The ceilings were so low that when we practiced layups, the ball sometimes got stuck in the beams.

Girls Learning Gymnastics in Their Gym Suits in the Girls’ Gym and Even the Gym Teacher Wore a Skirt
Girls’ Gym Classes Focused on Grace and Beauty

Half the Court, Half the Freedom

Even what we learned in gym class was different. Girls had to play “girls’ basketball,” a version created to make the game “easier,” since it was believed that full-court basketball was too demanding for girls. This old version, used in many schools from the early 1900s through the 1970s, was called “six-on-six” or “girls’ rules basketball.”

When I first played basketball in school, it wasn’t the same game the boys played. We had six players instead of five—three forwards who could shoot and three guards who stayed on the defensive side. We played on a half-court divided by a center line that only the players handling the ball could cross . We could dribble only three times before passing, and physical contact was almost completely forbidden. We were even allowed, and encouraged, to shoot baskets “granny-style,” holding the ball between our knees and tossing it underhand toward the hoop. The pace was slow, the scores were low, and the message was clear: girls were expected to stay in their place, both on the court and off it.

Girls Playing Girls’ Rules Basketball in Their Gym Suits

Even our uniforms told the story. Those stiff, unflattering one-piece gym suits were designed to look proper rather than practical. Looking back, I can see how those “rules” mirrored the larger social expectations for girls at the time. Our sports and our clothing were built around the belief that girls were fragile and needed protection from anything too vigorous. It seems absurd now, but it shaped generations of girls’ experiences in school.

The Art of Gym Class: Grace Over Grit

This is What Boys’ Gym Class Looked Like — Daring and Physical
This is What Girl’s Gym Class Looked Like — Graceful Teamwork

Back then, even gym class reflected what adults thought girls should be. We didn’t play basketball often. While the boys learned wrestling, indoor hockey, and rope climbing, we were guided toward something called “educational gymnastics poses.” The teacher would hold up posters showing silhouettes of girls forming shapes—arches, pyramids, balances, or mirror poses—and we had to recreate them in pairs or trios. Mostly, this was geared for getting girls ready for the major ‘girl sport’ of the era, which was cheerleading. It wasn’t about strength or competition; it was about grace, rhythm, and teamwork. Sometimes we moved to music, sometimes in silence, always carefully, neatly, and “ladylike.”

At the time, it seemed normal. Only later did I realize how those lessons shaped what we thought we could do. The boys built muscle and confidence in their own strength. We learned to move beautifully within limits someone else had drawn for us, always reminded to be graceful above all else.

Running Against Limits

Track and field for girls in the 1960s was another story of boundaries. We weren’t encouraged to test our limits; we were told we had them. The longest race most schools allowed was the 400 meters, and even that was considered daring. Anything longer was thought to be “too hard on the female body.” There were no pole vaults, no steeplechase, and certainly no marathon dreams for girls. Our shoes were thin canvas, our uniforms were culottes or those same one-piece gym suits, and our races were short and polite. While the boys trained to push themselves, we were trained to stay within the lines drawn for our “protection.”

Separate and Unequal: Access, Uniforms, and Coaching

Looking back, it’s impossible to miss how uneven school sports were. The boys had full teams for every season—varsity, junior varsity, and sometimes even freshman squads. They had real coaches, matching numbered uniforms, and the best gym times and equipment. Their sports were loud, physical, and proudly competitive.

For the girls, it was another story. Cheerleading was the big opportunity, with its polished uniforms, pom-poms, and choreographed enthusiasm, but it mostly existed to cheer for the boys. When girls’ sports teams did form, they struggled to find enough players and often didn’t have proper uniforms. We wore our gym suits or athletic shorts, and practice usually meant borrowing a corner of the boys’ gym after they finished.

Other popular sports activities for girls were baton twirling, tennis, badminton, and volleyball.

Coaches for girls were almost always volunteers. The boys’ coaches were paid stipends for their work. Bus transportation was provided for the boys’ teams; the girls’ teams carpooled to events. The results of the boys’ games appeared in the local sports section of the newspaper. The girls’ teams were mentioned only if they won a regional event or as a novelty story about “the girls’ efforts.”

This Was the Girls’ High School Volleyball Team. As You Can See, Not Many Girls Participated

At the time, it all felt normal. Only later did I realize that what we lacked wasn’t talent or interest—it was opportunity. The difference between what boys were given and what girls were offered wasn’t about ability. It was about expectations.

Today’s girls can hardly imagine those days. Just as we once struggled to picture what our great-grandmothers endured as suffragists fighting for the right to vote, the young women of today can’t fully imagine a time when girls were expected to be “ladylike” at all times, even in gym class. I’m grateful they don’t have to. The world I grew up in is now history, and those quiet revolutions such as pants in classrooms, sneakers with support, and girls running their own races, were steps toward something better.

We never realized we were part of a cultural revolution.  It seemed to happen so gradually, but it didn’t happen without effort and pushing the limits of what was acceptable during that time frame.

What Teachers Wish They Could Tell You

What Parents Don’t See: Why Teachers Can’t Explain the Disruptions in Their Child’s Classroom

I have always believed that holding children accountable for their actions is part of preparing them to become responsible adults. As a teacher for more than twenty years, I often heard colleagues say, “We can’t hold him accountable because his action was a part of his documented disability.” At times this was absolutely correct. For example, a child with Tourette’s Syndrome should not face punishment for verbal outbursts that are involuntary. The problem arises when this reasoning is applied too broadly. In many schools, students with severe behavioral outbursts, including aggression and actions that endanger others, are excused on the grounds that their behavior is “part of their disability.”

Special education law in the United States is designed to protect students with disabilities from discrimination and to guarantee that they receive a free appropriate public education. These protections are necessary, but in practice they have been applied so generally that students who cannot function in general education classrooms are often kept there with insufficient supports. The doctrine of “least restrictive environment” is sometimes stretched so far that it leaves teachers and other students unprotected. While the student with a disability is shielded from consequences, classmates lose instructional time and are denied the safe and orderly classroom they are also promised under the law.

Part of the difficulty lies in the procedures schools are legally required to follow. Federal regulations demand that schools demonstrate they have tried a series of interventions and supports, often over extended periods of time, before considering moving a student to a more restrictive setting. These interventions can include behavior charts, counseling, small group instruction, or modifications to classroom routines. During this lengthy process the student often remains in the general education classroom, even if their behavior is dangerous or chronically disruptive. Teachers and classmates may endure weeks or months of interruptions before the school is legally able to recommend a different placement.

Complicating matters further are strict privacy laws. Teachers cannot share with other parents the reasons for a student’s behavior, or the interventions being put in place to address it. This means that when a child is throwing chairs, shouting, or hitting classmates, the other parents only see the disruption without any context. To them it appears that the teacher or the school is ignoring the problem. The general education teacher, who is legally forbidden from explaining, becomes the target of frustration and even hostility from families who believe the classroom is out of control. This dynamic creates immense stress for the teacher, who is doing everything required behind the scenes but is powerless to show it, and it creates mistrust and tension among parents and students.

Schools also fear the consequences of making the “wrong” decision. If a district is judged to have removed a child from a general education setting too quickly, it can face lawsuits, formal complaints, or regulatory actions from state or federal agencies. Litigation in special education is extremely costly. Even a single case can cost a district tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and settlements, not to mention the risk of corrective action plans or loss of funding. Faced with the choice of keeping a disruptive student in the general classroom or risking financial penalties and legal battles, administrators often choose to err on the side of inclusion, even when it is no longer working.

The financial structure of special education contributes to this problem. When Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975, later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), it promised to cover up to 40 percent of the “excess cost” of educating students with disabilities. That promise has never been kept. In fact, federal contributions have hovered between 13 and 15 percent for decades. The highest ever was 15.7 percent in 2020, still far short of the original pledge. As a result, states and local school districts are forced to cover roughly 85 percent of the cost of federally mandated services. In other words, districts are required to provide one hundred percent of the services with little more than a fraction of the intended funding.

Because of this funding gap, schools often lack the specialized programs, behavioral therapists, and support staff that students truly need. Instead, the responsibilities fall on general education teachers. Yet the typical general education teacher receives only one course in college that introduces the basics of special education, and in some programs a second class that touches briefly on inclusion strategies. These courses rarely prepare teachers to manage intensive behavioral needs, conduct functional behavioral assessments, or implement complex intervention plans. Once in the field, teachers may receive a handful of professional development workshops each year, but this is nowhere near the level of training needed to handle aggressive or disruptive behaviors that can halt learning for an entire class.

Special education teachers are also stretched to their limits. Although states may set caseload limits, districts regularly obtain waivers on the grounds that they cannot find enough certified staff or cannot afford them. Caseloads that are supposed to range from 15 to 25 students may balloon to 30 or 40. Special education teachers do far more than teach. They are responsible for writing and updating Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), scheduling and leading meetings, coordinating with multiple general education teachers, collecting and analyzing progress data, communicating with parents, supervising paraprofessionals, and staying current with complex federal and state regulations. Each IEP can take several hours to draft and revise, and each student requires multiple meetings per year. The workload becomes overwhelming, especially when students represent a wide range of disability categories such as autism, emotional disturbance, ADHD, or learning disabilities.

Paraprofessionals are often assigned to help, but they are usually part-time, hourly employees with limited training and no benefits. They may be tasked with serving several students at once, and general education teachers are expected to rely on them even though they have no role in hiring or supervising these aides. This patchwork system leaves teachers feeling unsupported and students without the consistency they need.

The Government Accountability Office reported in 2019 that teachers frequently lack the training, resources, and staff support necessary to manage the behavioral needs of students with disabilities. One district required teachers to record a child’s behavior every five minutes throughout the day as part of a mandated intervention plan. Teachers reported that this documentation consumed more time than actually teaching the rest of the class. Research has consistently shown that when even one or two students engage in extreme disruptive or violent behavior, it reduces instructional time and academic progress for everyone present.

Schools are placed in a no-win situation. General education teachers must manage dangerous behaviors without the training, staff, or backup to do so effectively. They are expected to implement behavior plans while simultaneously teaching twenty or more other students. If the student with the IEP does not succeed, the teacher is blamed for failing to follow the accommodations. If the rest of the class falls behind, the teacher is blamed for poor classroom management. In reality, both outcomes are driven by systemic underfunding, legal pressures, and unrealistic expectations.

The result is that Congress continues to underfund IDEA by tens of billions of dollars each year, and schools, fearing lawsuits and regulatory penalties, lean on general education teachers to fill the gaps. At the same time, privacy laws prevent teachers from explaining to parents what is happening, leaving them unfairly viewed as ineffective or uncaring. This unsustainable situation is one of the major reasons teachers leave the profession. Until IDEA is funded at the level originally promised, and schools are able to provide the necessary staff and programs, classrooms will continue to operate in crisis mode, to the detriment of all students.

This issue is not simply a matter for teachers and administrators. It affects every parent and every child in our public schools. Students with disabilities deserve appropriate services delivered in safe and supportive environments, and their peers deserve classrooms where they can learn without constant disruption or fear. Teachers deserve the training, resources, and staffing they need to do their jobs effectively. None of this is possible without Congress fulfilling its decades-old promise to fund IDEA at the level originally intended.

Families, communities, and policymakers must recognize that underfunding and overgeneralized regulations are straining schools to the breaking point. If we want to retain skilled teachers, safeguard the rights of students with disabilities, and protect the learning opportunities of all children, we must push for reform. That means demanding full federal funding, expanding access to specialized programs, and giving schools the authority and resources to intervene earlier when dangerous behaviors occur. Until then, classrooms across America will remain caught in a cycle of disruption and frustration that serves no one well.

by Jan Mariet 10/29/2025

Being Different is Not the Problem

I saw this meme on social media.  I can’t credit it to any particular author, because I’ve seen it posted by numerous people.  But I’m sharing it anyway, because it really spoke to me.

I first learned about left-handed kids in kindergarten, when I picked up a pair of scissors labeled LEFT. (Yes, back then you had to have special scissors if you were left-handed, because the “regular” ones would not work. Today, most scissors are designed for everyone.)

I gave them a try, quickly realized they didn’t work for me, and never touched them again. Did I suddenly want to be left-handed? No. But did I realize that being left-handed made some things harder? Absolutely. That simple moment gave me empathy.

About 1 in 10 people are left-handed, which means in a class of 30 kids, about three of them will be lefties. They needed special scissors that were not always available. They had to write with their arms resting on the spiral of their notebooks. When they learned to write, they had to hold their pencils differently, often smearing the lead or ink across the page. It was not that long ago in our history that left-handed children were called evil, forced to write with their right hand, and shamed for being different.

When I wore braces on my legs as a child, none of my friends wanted to wear them too. About 1 in 100 children use leg braces for medical conditions such as cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, or an injury. My friends did not want to trade places with me, but they did become more aware of what I faced.  They noticed. And they grew more empathetic. It was not that long ago that children with cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy were sent to asylums and lived short lives in institutions, hidden from the world.

Today, about 1 in 31 children in the United States has been identified with autism spectrum disorder. (That figure is about 1 in 100 globally.)  How many neurotypical children do you know who say, “Gosh, I sure wish I had autism”? The answer is none.

What they do say is, “Oh, that looks hard,” or, “I did not know you had to do that.” They notice. They learn. And they gain understanding. There was a time when children with autism were not even allowed to go to school, but instead were placed in institutions, forever separated from their families.

Children, by nature, are curious. They experiment. They observe. They may even try something for themselves. But they are also smart enough to recognize when something is not for them. And in that recognition, they learn understanding. They learn compassion. They learn empathy for those who experience the world differently. — unless adults make it acceptable for these children who are not in the majority to be ridiculed, teased, or shamed, or unless adults insist that they hide their differences and “be like everyone else.” When that happens, children are not encouraged to be visible or to participate. They are taught that their differences are a burden instead of a strength.

By now, you have probably realized this post has nothing to do with being left-handed or wearing leg braces. It is about what it means to be different from what society expects. When we treat being in the minority of any group as something to be fixed, hidden, or avoided, we do not just dismiss differences. We teach children shame. We teach them guilt. And we teach them to shrink their lives to fit society’s narrow definition of “normal.”

For too long, they were forced to write with their right hand, often illegibly and painfully, instead of being allowed to use the hand that came naturally. They were barred from factory jobs where machines were designed only for right-handed workers. In some faith traditions, they were even forbidden from serving in religious roles, no matter what their calling.

For too long, children with disabilities were hidden away from the world, denied the chance to become self-supporting or to have families of their own. They watched life pass by through the smudged windows of institutions that offered none of the care, dignity, or opportunities a child needs to truly thrive.

And so, I end this by saying, “Being left-handed is perfectly fine with me.” What is not fine is when society makes anyone feel that their differences are something to be erased.

How to Ruin Your Kid in 20 Easy Steps

This image has a starburst background and says, "How to ruin your kid in 20 easy steps. Just follow this guide and you'll have a 30-year-old who can't fill out a job application and still relies on you for video game subscriptions.
  1. Always blame the teacher, coach, or other people whenever your child gets in trouble, so they never learn to take responsibility.
  2. Believe your child, without question, even when all evidence shows differently, so they never learn honesty or accountability.
  3. Do everything for them, so they never learn how to do things on their own.
  4. Fight all their battles, so they never learn to express themselves clearly or stand up for what they believe in.
  5. Give them rewards for nothing, so they learn to expect praise without effort.
  6. Give them everything they want, so they never learn to choose wisely or work hard to earn something.
  7. Ignore your child’s bad behavior, or excuse it with “they’re just tired” or “kids will be kids,” so they never learn right from wrong.
  8. Let your partner treat you poorly in front of them, so they learn that abuse, disrespect, threats, and violence are a normal part of a “loving” relationship.
  9. Micromanage their every move, so they never learn independence or confidence.
  10. Never set boundaries, and let them make the rules, so they never learn respect for authority or limits.
  11. When you do give them a consequence, let them whine until you give in, so they never learn that rules matter.
  12. Never let them fail, so they never learn resilience or how to recover from setbacks.
  13. Protect them from uncomfortable feelings like disappointment, boredom, or frustration, so they never learn how to cope.
  14. Protect them from consequences, even when they deserve them, so they never learn that actions have results.
  15. Put their happiness above all else, even if it means letting them disrespect others, so they never learn empathy or consideration.
  16. Share adult burdens with them, like your financial, emotional, or relationship problems, so they never learn healthy boundaries.
  17. Solve all their problems for them, so they never learn problem-solving skills or perseverance.
  18. Treat them like your best friend instead of your child, so they never learn to respect authority or feel secure.
  19. Compare them to other kids, so they never learn to value their own unique strengths.
  20. Never apologize when you’re wrong, so they never learn humility or how to repair relationships.

Just follow these 20 steps, and you’ll have a 30-year-old who can’t fill out a job application and still relies on you for video game subscriptions.

Here are some other articles you might enjoy:

When the Table Was Full – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

The Good Old Days — But for Whom?  When Schools Changed: The Forgotten Truth About Inclusion and Exclusion fore special education % – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Skirts, Sneakers, & Sports – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

“Life Unworthy of Living” Response – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Laugh a Little, Learn a Lot: The Power of Humor in the Classroom

Teaching is part science, part art, and—on most days—a solid dose of stand-up comedy.

We’ve all been there. You ask a question. Blank stares. You rephrase it. Still nothing. Then you toss out, “Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field!” Suddenly, the tension lifts. A few groans, a few chuckles—but now they’re listening.

Why Humor Works
Humor isn’t just for laughs. It’s a powerful tool that:

*Builds trust and relationships

*Reduces anxiety (especially around tests!)

*Encourages participation

*Makes learning stick

Studies show that students remember information better when it’s delivered with a smile—or a pun.

Classic Classroom Comedy
Here are a few of my tried-and-true favorites:

“What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?”
A stick.

“Why was the math book sad?”
Because it had too many problems.

“Why don’t skeletons fight each other?”
They don’t have the guts.

And of course, the infamous:
“I planted some birdseed last month. Still no birds.”
(You’d be surprised how long it takes them to get that one.)

The Student Side of Funny
Kids are hilarious—intentionally or not.

One of my students once said, “I wish school had a snooze button like my alarm clock.”
Honestly? Same here.

Another time:
Student: “I forgot my homework at home. Can I bring it tomorrow?”
Me: “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that, I’d be rich enough to retire. Yesterday.”

Humor helps students feel seen, safe, and part of the learning process. When they laugh with you, they’re more likely to trust you. And when they trust you, they’re more likely to try.

Teachers: Wise and Witty
While we may deliver bad jokes with wild abandon, don’t mistake our humor for a lack of depth. Teachers are walking treasure troves of wisdom—about life, learning, and the human condition.

We’ve seen students at their best, their worst, and their most honest. We know when “I don’t know” really means “I’m scared to be wrong.” That’s why one day, I asked Zack a question, and he gave me the usual out:
“I don’t know.”
I smiled and replied, “Okay—but if you did know, what would the answer be?”
He paused… and gave the correct answer.
Turns out, the brain works better when fear isn’t in charge.

Wise Words to Live By
Let’s end with a gem:

“I asked the teacher if she could teach me to procrastinate… she said she’d do it later.”

Final Bell
So go ahead—crack a joke, tell a pun, laugh at the chaos. In the end, humor isn’t a distraction from learning. It is learning. It’s connection. It’s courage. It’s what helps students take risks, try again, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll remember your corniest jokes twenty years from now.

“I pay taxes. That means I’m YOUR BOSS!”

An angry parent uses this classic line on a teacher, “I pay taxes. That means I’m your boss!”

The teacher replies, “You’re my boss? Then boss, where are my promised classroom supplies? Where is my updated curriculum? Where’s my reimbursement for the professional development I paid for myself and did on my own time? Where’s the teacher’s aide I was promised because my class size is above the state maximum? When can I expect my extra pay for all the hours I worked outside of my contracted hours?”

The parent’s response? *Stunned silence*

Why I Wrote “Saying Sorry Isn’t Good Enough”

As a teacher for 20 years, one of the most important lessons I tried to model was this: when you make a mistake, own it. If I raised my voice, blamed the wrong student, or reacted unfairly, I had a rule—if the mistake happened publicly, the apology needed to be public too. I wanted my students to see that everyone, even teachers, can make mistakes—and that a sincere apology is part of making things right.

At one school, however, I encountered a troubling practice. Students were required to apologize whether they meant it or not, and the other student was forced to accept the apology and shake hands. It didn’t sit right with me. What message were we sending? That saying the words “I’m sorry” is enough, even if your actions don’t change? That children must accept an apology, even when it’s clearly insincere?

I stood firm in my belief that apologies should come from the heart. I taught my students the four parts of a sincere apology: say what you’re sorry for, explain why it was wrong, express genuine regret, and describe what you’ll do differently next time. I also told them something few adults say out loud: you don’t have to accept an apology that doesn’t feel real.

To drive this point home, I created a classroom lesson using a beautiful ceramic plate. In a planned moment, a student (in on the lesson) smashed the plate on the floor and casually muttered “sorry.” The class was stunned. The next day, I brought the plate back—poorly glued, chipped, and clearly damaged—and asked, “Is it all better now?”

We all agreed it wasn’t.

That simple, powerful moment helped my students understand that real apologies are more than words—they require sincerity, accountability, and change. Saying Sorry Isn’t Good Enough was born from that experience. It’s a story to help children, parents, and teachers understand that we do children a disservice when we teach them that “sorry” fixes everything. It doesn’t. But a heartfelt apology? That’s a step toward real repair.

When Passion Isn’t Enough: The Unraveling of Teaching

I’ve been a teacher since before standardized testing became the end-all, be-all measure of student success and teacher effectiveness.

I taught before there were phones in classrooms. I remember handwriting report cards, using duplicating machines, and teaching with overhead projectors. I watched the shift from handwritten grade books and planners to early computerized systems—back when we still had to print everything and send it home with students. I remember the day we got our first classroom computer, the day district email arrived, and the moment they installed the first teacher-only phone line in our classroom (which still couldn’t receive outside calls). All of this has happened in just the last 30 years.

But as technology advanced, something else changed too.

Discipline became a dirty word. Consequences became seen as punitive and unacceptable. Expectations became impossible. Standardized tests began driving everything, while real learning, creative thinking, and handwriting quietly disappeared from the curriculum. Teachers became overloaded with requirements that never stopped piling up. More was added every year—nothing was ever taken away.

Then came the pandemic. And everything that had once felt difficult became unmanageable.

Behavior in classrooms declined sharply. Students who constantly disrupted learning were no longer removed, instead, they triggered class-wide evacuations called “room clears.” Teachers were expected to meet the needs of 30 or more students, including a third or more with IEPs, while tracking behavior charts every 15 minutes for 10 or more students. We were told these were “non-negotiables,” even when they made quality teaching impossible.

We were told to “differentiate for every learner,” but never given the time, support, or resources to do it.

Meanwhile, our planning and grading time was stripped away. We were pulled to cover for absent colleagues without compensation. Many teachers had fewer than 20 minutes to eat lunch—on a good day. And when we got sick? The burden of writing sub plans often meant we came in anyway.

All of this while our pay stagnated—or declined. For six straight years, I saw my take-home pay shrink as insurance premiums rose and salaries stayed flat. And yet the demands kept growing. The level of education required increased. The stress mounted. And the respect for teachers vanished.

Let’s be clear: Teachers don’t choose their students. They don’t control who walks through their classroom door, or how far behind those children might be. But when test scores don’t measure up? Teachers are blamed.

We are asked to do the impossible. New teachers burn out quickly and leave. Veteran teachers hold on until their health gives out, or they retire early, or leave the profession entirely—often taking second jobs just to make ends meet along the way.

The system is collapsing under the weight of unrealistic demands, unfunded mandates, and a legacy of low pay for what was once dismissed as “women’s work.” And no one in power seems willing to make the structural changes needed to save it.

Where does it end?

It’s no mystery why teachers are leaving in record numbers. Or why fewer young people are choosing to enter the profession. They know what we know: It’s not just hard to make a living as a teacher today—it’s nearly impossible.

Being Homebound in an Empty House

I used to be a teacher.
Before that, I was a city supervisor.
Here and there, I’ve been a writer.

Now, I am a nothing.
I sit in a house, day-in and day-out
without anyone to talk to.

I live for Mondays, when the home nurse
comes to take my blood work and change
my PICC Line dressing
because it is 20 minutes of conversation
I don’t typically get.

My hobbies are gone.
My job and volunteer work are gone.
I’m completely unreliable
because I never know if I’ll have the energy
or ability to do anything.

I’m so hungry sometimes
while food spoils in the fridge
because I don’t have the strength or
the energy to actually cook it.

Anything I try to make my life better
fails
just like me.
A complete and total failure
sitting alone day after day.

Be patient, they tell me
Your body needs time to heal
as months and months pass
and very little changes.

The years pass
and very little changes.
And all I can say is,
“I used to be . . .”

Gun Violence in Schools – There is No One Simple Solution

In case you’ve lost track:

Thurston High School

Columbine High School

Heritage High School

Deming Middle School

Fort Gibson Middle School

Buell Elementary School

Lake Worth Middle School

University of Arkansas

Junipero Serra High School

Santana High School

Bishop Neumann High School

Pacific Lutheran University

Granite Hills High School

Lew Wallace High School

Martin Luther King, Jr High School

Appalachian School of Law

Washington High School

Conception Abbey

Benjamin Tasker Middle School

University of Arizona

Lincoln High School

John McDonogh High School

Red Lion Area Junior High School

Case Western Reserve University

Rocori High School

Ballou High School

Randallstown High School

Bowen High School

Red Lake Senior High School

Harlan Community Academy High School

Campbell County High School

Milwee Middle School

Roseburg High School

Pine Middle School

Essex Elementary School

Duquesne University

Platte Canyon High School

Weston High School

West Nickel Mines School

Joplin Memorial Middle School

Henry Foss High School

Compton Centennial High School

Virginia Tech

Success Tech Academy

Miami Carol City Senior High School

Hamilton High School

Louisiana Technical College

Mitchell High School

EO Green Junior High School

Northern Illinois University

Lakota Middle School

Knoxville Central High School

Willoughby South High School

Henry Ford High School

University of Central Arkansas

Dillard High School

Dunbar High School

Hampton University

Harvard College

Larose-Cut Off Middle School

International Studies Academy

Skyline College

Discovery Middle School

University of Alabama

DeKalb School

Deer Creek Middle School

Ohio State University

Mumford High School

University of Texas

Kelly Elementary School

Marinette High School

Aurora Central High School

Millard South High School

Martinsville West Middle School

Worthing High School

Millard South High School

Highlands Intermediate School

Cape Fear High School

Chardon High School

Episcopal School of Jacksonville

Oikos University

Hamilton High School

Perry Hall School

Normal Community High School

University of South Alabama

Banner Academy South

University of Southern California

Sandy Hook Elementary School

Apostolic Revival Center Christian School

Taft Union High School

Osborn High School

Stevens Institute of Business and Arts

Hazard Community and Technical College

Chicago State University

Lone Star College-North

Cesar Chavez High School

Price Middle School

University of Central Florida

New River Community College

Grambling State University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ossie Ware Mitchell Middle School

Ronald E McNair Discovery Academy

North Panola High School

Carver High School

Agape Christian Academy

Sparks Middle School

North Carolina A&T State University

Stephenson High School

Brashear High School

West Orange High School

Arapahoe High School

Edison High School

Liberty Technology Magnet High School

Hillhouse High School

Berrendo Middle School

Purdue University

South Carolina State University

Los Angeles Valley College

Charles F Brush High School

University of Southern California

Georgia Regents University

Academy of Knowledge Preschool

Benjamin Banneker High School

D H Conley High School

East English Village Preparatory Academy

Paine College

Georgia Gwinnett College

John F Kennedy High School

Seattle Pacific University

Reynolds High School

Indiana State University

Albemarle High School

Fern Creek Traditional High School

Langston Hughes High School

Marysville Pilchuck High School

Florida State University

Miami Carol City High School

Rogers State University

Rosemary Anderson High School

Wisconsin Lutheran High School

Frederick High School

Tenaya Middle School

Bethune-Cookman University

Pershing Elementary School

Wayne Community College

JB Martin Middle School

Southwestern Classical Academy

Savannah State University

Harrisburg High School

Umpqua Community College

Northern Arizona University

Texas Southern University

Tennessee State University

Winston-Salem State University

Mojave High School

Lawrence Central High School

Franklin High School

Muskegon Heights High School

Independence High School

Madison High School

Antigo High School

University of California-Los Angeles

Jeremiah Burke High School

Alpine High School

Townville Elementary School

Vigor High School

Linden McKinley STEM Academy

June Jordan High School for Equity

Union Middle School

Mueller Park Junior High School

West Liberty-Salem High School

University of Washington

King City High School

North Park Elementary School

North Lake College

Freeman High School

Mattoon High School

Rancho Tehama Elementary School

Aztec High School

Wake Forest University

Italy High School

NET Charter High School

Marshall County High School

Sal Castro Middle School

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

Great Mills High School

Central Michigan University

Huffman High School

Frederick Douglass High School

Forest High School

Highland High School

Dixon High School

Santa Fe High School

Noblesville West Middle School

University of North Carolina Charlotte

STEM School Highlands Ranch

Edgewood High School

Palm Beach Central High School

Providence Career & Technical Academy

Fairley High School (school bus)

Canyon Springs High School

Dennis Intermediate School

Florida International University

Central Elementary School

Cascade Middle School

Davidson High School

Prairie View A & M University

Altascocita High School

Central Academy of Excellence

Cleveland High School

Robert E Lee High School

Cheyenne South High School

Grambling State University

Blountsville Elementary School

Holmes County, Mississippi (school bus)

Prescott High School

College of the Mainland

Wynbrooke Elementary School

UNC Charlotte

Riverview Florida (school bus)

Second Chance High School

Carman-Ainsworth High School

Williwaw Elementary School

Monroe Clark Middle School

Central Catholic High School

Jeanette High School

Eastern Hills High School

DeAnza High School

Ridgway High School

Reginald F Lewis High School

Saugus High School

Pleasantville High School

Waukesha South High School

Oshkosh High School

Catholic Academy of New Haven

Bellaire High School

North Crowley High School

McAuliffe Elementary School

South Oak Cliff High School

Texas A&M University-Commerce

Sonora High School

Western Illinois University

Oxford High School

Robb Elementary SchoolThurston High School

Columbine High School

Heritage High School

Deming Middle School

Fort Gibson Middle School

Buell Elementary School

Lake Worth Middle School

University of Arkansas

Junipero Serra High School

Santana High School

Bishop Neumann High School

Pacific Lutheran University

Granite Hills High School

Lew Wallace High School

Martin Luther King, Jr High School

Appalachian School of Law

Washington High School

Conception Abbey

Benjamin Tasker Middle School

University of Arizona

Lincoln High School

John McDonogh High School

Red Lion Area Junior High School

Case Western Reserve University

Rocori High School

Ballou High School

Randallstown High School

Bowen High School

Red Lake Senior High School

Harlan Community Academy High School

Campbell County High School

Milwee Middle School

Roseburg High School

Pine Middle School

Essex Elementary School

Duquesne University

Platte Canyon High School

Weston High School

West Nickel Mines School

Joplin Memorial Middle School

Henry Foss High School

Compton Centennial High School

Virginia Tech

Success Tech Academy

Miami Carol City Senior High School

Hamilton High School

Louisiana Technical College

Mitchell High School

EO Green Junior High School

Northern Illinois University

Lakota Middle School

Knoxville Central High School

Willoughby South High School

Henry Ford High School

University of Central Arkansas

Dillard High School

Dunbar High School

Hampton University

Harvard College

Larose-Cut Off Middle School

International Studies Academy

Skyline College

Discovery Middle School

University of Alabama

DeKalb School

Deer Creek Middle School

Ohio State University

Mumford High School

University of Texas

Kelly Elementary School

Marinette High School

Aurora Central High School

Millard South High School

Martinsville West Middle School

Worthing High School

Millard South High School

Highlands Intermediate School

Cape Fear High School

Chardon High School

Episcopal School of Jacksonville

Oikos University

Hamilton High School

Perry Hall School

Normal Community High School

University of South Alabama

Banner Academy South

University of Southern California

Sandy Hook Elementary School

Apostolic Revival Center Christian School

Taft Union High School

Osborn High School

Stevens Institute of Business and Arts

Hazard Community and Technical College

Chicago State University

Lone Star College-North

Cesar Chavez High School

Price Middle School

University of Central Florida

New River Community College

Grambling State University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ossie Ware Mitchell Middle School

Ronald E McNair Discovery Academy

North Panola High School

Carver High School

Agape Christian Academy

Sparks Middle School

North Carolina A&T State University

Stephenson High School

Brashear High School

West Orange High School

Arapahoe High School

Edison High School

Liberty Technology Magnet High School

Hillhouse High School

Berrendo Middle School

Purdue University

South Carolina State University

Los Angeles Valley College

Charles F Brush High School

University of Southern California

Georgia Regents University

Academy of Knowledge Preschool

Benjamin Banneker High School

D H Conley High School

East English Village Preparatory Academy

Paine College

Georgia Gwinnett College

John F Kennedy High School

Seattle Pacific University

Reynolds High School

Indiana State University

Albemarle High School

Fern Creek Traditional High School

Langston Hughes High School

Marysville Pilchuck High School

Florida State University

Miami Carol City High School

Rogers State University

Rosemary Anderson High School

Wisconsin Lutheran High School

Frederick High School

Tenaya Middle School

Bethune-Cookman University

Pershing Elementary School

Wayne Community College

JB Martin Middle School

Southwestern Classical Academy

Savannah State University

Harrisburg High School

Umpqua Community College

Northern Arizona University

Texas Southern University

Tennessee State University

Winston-Salem State University

Mojave High School

Lawrence Central High School

Franklin High School

Muskegon Heights High School

Independence High School

Madison High School

Antigo High School

University of California-Los Angeles

Jeremiah Burke High School

Alpine High School

Townville Elementary School

Vigor High School

Linden McKinley STEM Academy

June Jordan High School for Equity

Union Middle School

Mueller Park Junior High School

West Liberty-Salem High School

University of Washington

King City High School

North Park Elementary School

North Lake College

Freeman High School

Mattoon High School

Rancho Tehama Elementary School

Aztec High School

Wake Forest University

Italy High School

NET Charter High School

Marshall County High School

Sal Castro Middle School

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

Great Mills High School

Central Michigan University

Huffman High School

Frederick Douglass High School

Forest High School

Highland High School

Dixon High School

Santa Fe High School

Noblesville West Middle School

University of North Carolina Charlotte

STEM School Highlands Ranch

Edgewood High School

Palm Beach Central High School

Providence Career & Technical Academy

Fairley High School (school bus)

Canyon Springs High School

Dennis Intermediate School

Florida International University

Central Elementary School

Cascade Middle School

Davidson High School

Prairie View A & M University

Altascocita High School

Central Academy of Excellence

Cleveland High School

Robert E Lee High School

Cheyenne South High School

Grambling State University

Blountsville Elementary School

Holmes County, Mississippi (school bus)

Prescott High School

College of the Mainland

Wynbrooke Elementary School

UNC Charlotte

Riverview Florida (school bus)

Second Chance High School

Carman-Ainsworth High School

Williwaw Elementary School

Monroe Clark Middle School

Central Catholic High School

Jeanette High School

Eastern Hills High School

DeAnza High School

Ridgway High School

Reginald F Lewis High School

Saugus High School

Pleasantville High School

Conniston Middle School

Waukesha South High School

Oshkosh High School

Catholic Academy of New Haven

Bellaire High School

North Crowley High School

McAuliffe Elementary School

South Oak Cliff High School

Texas A&M University-Commerce

Sonora High School

Western Illinois University

Oxford High School

Bridgewater University

Robb Elementary School

Michigan State University

Covenant Christian School

This list seems endless! The one thing each of these schools have in common is a child/young person with emotional problems or mental illness got a hold of weapons and did the unthinkable — killed other people — most of them other children or young adults.

I can tell you, as a former teacher, young people with emotional problems, mental illness, uncontrolled rage (which is a mental illness) or reactive behavior are not helped in schools. They are either lost in the shuffle or given an IEP (individualized education plan) and placed in a “general ed” class, possibly with 10 or more other students also with such issues, and 20 or more students who are frustrated with their inability to learn because these students are placed into regular ed classrooms that are not given the support and resources they need.

General ed teachers are overwhelmed by this — wouldn’t you be? They are teachers, surrounded by students with undiagnosed, underdiagnosed, or “accommodated” mental health issues, in overcrowded classrooms, with very little assistance, limited training, and no time for dealing with these students, and school counselors (if the school even has them) who may have a caseload of 500 students! Schools can’t be “everything” — or they are so busy trying to be everything that the majority fall between the cracks.

Something has to be done if this many children feel isolated and ostracized enough to become school annihilators. Something has to be done if so many children with emotional problems and mental illness are plopped into regular ed classrooms without the support and assistance they need. Something has to be done when school counselors have such huge caseloads that they can’t get to the students who really need them. And just putting more responsibility on schools, without providing the staff, infrastructure, resources, and funding they need to do anything about it is not the answer either.

I also have to say this — it is indecent that in our society that so many children and young people find access to guns, and guns with rapid-fire capabilities, and no one in their lives even notices!

It boggles my mind when I see a parent on the news who had no idea their 6-year-old child has been carrying around the parents’ legally purchased loaded gun to school, and that they shot a teacher with it. It boggles my mind that a high school student can get access to and store 4 or 5 rapid fire assault rifles, ammo, and protective vests, and no one in their family is even aware of it.

We have to step up as a society and realize the problem isn’t just guns. It isn’t just lack of mental health options. It isn’t just school overcrowding and mainstreaming that is not being done properly. It isn’t just parents who are not present in their child’s life, or those who do not actively parent at all. It isn’t just classrooms where the aggressive and emotionally reactive kids outnumber the “behavior-typical” students, or where classes are so overcrowded and counselors are so unavailable that students are bullied, feel unwanted, and want revenge, or feel they are a “nobody” with nothing to lose who think mass murder of other children is a great way to “prove” they are not “nothing.” It is such a combination of things. There is no one simple thing that will instantly fix this ongoing tragedy in American culture. We, as a nation, are failing our most vulnerable kids in so many areas. We are all looking for a quick fix, when this problem is systemic of so many overlapping and interlocking issues.

Thank You, Mrs. Radar – Or How Reading Shaped My World

Growing up, reading was always an important part of my life. I still remember when our local public library opened a children’s department, and most Sundays at 3:30pm, that is where you would find me. Being let loose in that magical room, and knowing I could select 3 books to take home with me was like being transported to a different world.

At my house, the newspaper was read after work by the adults, while we children read whatever might interest us. Before 4th grade, I had so many magazine subscriptions there was always something new and interesting to read. These were educational magazines, and they opened a world I had never seen.

There were always books on our bookshelves in the family room, especially Reader’s Digest condensed books. There was no such thing as a “children’s book” in my home – if you wanted to read it, you simply did. If it was too advanced for you, you simply wouldn’t understand it, and would move on.

You might think that I was always a good reader, but you would be wrong. I was the last child in my class to learn to read, and it frustrated me to no end. I didn’t learn to read until the end of first grade. My teacher, Mrs. Radar, never gave up on me. She told me that all flowers bloom when they are ready, and I would bloom and read when I was ready. With her, I never felt dumb or stupid, even as all the other children began reading, and I still couldn’t.

I would sit with one of my Fun With Dick and Jane readers and desperately try to recognize a word – any word, but day after day, they eluded me. While everyone else moved on, I still struggled with the first reader, We Look and See.

I remember one day towards the end of the year, staring at that book, willing myself to recognize a word – any word! “It” was the first word I recognized, followed by “look” and then “come.” Then the words all came together and told a story. Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot, and Fluffy all helped me feel like I had conquered the world! From that point on, I read everything and anything I could get my hands on.

My love of chapter books started in the 3rd grade, when Mrs. Arnquist began reading aloud every day after recess. She read the most incredible books, and it encouraged me to start checking-out chapter books instead of picture books at the library.


She encouraged us to learn new words by reading, and to share those new words with the class. It made learning vocabulary a game. We couldn’t wait for our turn to go up to the front of the class, tell our word, read the sentence we found with that word in it, and explain what it meant to the whole class. It was exciting! Yes, vocabulary was exciting!

We learned to use a dictionary that year. I remember one time, Mrs. Arnquist “bet” us an ice cream sundae if we could find an English word (excluding abbreviations) which had no vowel in it. We all read through the dictionary for days hoping to win that sundae, but of course, we never did find one.

At school, in 4th and 5th grade, our class went frequently to the school library, where Mrs. Katz, the librarian, ruled supreme. She could direct you to any book you desired, and when you weren’t sure what book to choose, she always had marvelous suggestions. I adored The Secret Garden in 5th grade. I chose it for its illustrated cover, but the writing entranced me. I was hooked.

In 4th grade and 5th grade, the reading aloud continued, each day, without fail. By this point, our teachers would announce the next book, and many of us would go the library and check out our own copy so we could read along. The only rule was we were not allowed to read ahead, so we wouldn’t ruin surprise twists and turns in the book.

Each day, we would beg our teacher to read more. Mrs. Rouse, our teacher in 4th grade, was a pro at ending at the best spots, leaving us begging for more. This is something I did when I became a teacher. I’d always pre-read the book, to find all the best stopping places that would leave my students begging for more.

To this day, I remember those books from 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade. Later in life, I read many of them to my own classes. Here are the ones that were the most memorable to me:
▸ By the Shores of Silver Lake
▸ Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
▸ Charlotte’s Web
▸ Farmer Boy
▸ Follow My Leader
▸ The Hiding Place
▸ Hitty, Her First Hundred Years
▸ Inky: Seeing Eye Dog
▸ Island of the Blue Dolphin
▸ Johnny Tremain
▸ The Life of Helen Keller
▸ Little House in the Big Woods
▸ Little House on the Prairie
▸ Little Town on the Prairie
▸ The Long Winter
▸ The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
▸ My Side of the Mountain
▸ On the Banks of Plum Creek
▸ Ramona the Pest
▸ Runaway Ralph
▸ The Sign of the Beaver
▸ Snow Treasure
▸ Sounder
▸ Stuart Little
▸ The Summer of the Swan
▸ The Trumpet of the Swan
▸ The Witch of Blackburn Pond
▸ Where the Red Fern Grows

By the end of 4th grade, I was hooked – on chapter books! Long books, complicated books, grown-up books, books about war and poverty, exploration, making a new life, and life in far away or long-ago places. Every night, before bed, I sat on the floor of my bedroom, reading for at least half an hour. Sometimes, I spent most of my Saturdays reading, as well. I may have had a shaky start to reading, but later, it became life-changing.

Reading was not always smooth sailing for me. In junior high and high school, our district had a recommended reading list, and we were supposed to only read books from that list for school for book reports. This is when “the book report incident” happened.

We had to keep a log of all the books we read in our permanent file, so that we wouldn’t “cheat” and reread the book the next year, and reuse its book report. Once a book was on your book list, you couldn’t use it again.

I methodically kept my list, and every month would add to my reading log in my permanent file. By the end of 9th grade, I had read every single book on the entire recommended reading list for high school. Crime and Punishment, The Count of Monte Cristo, Les Miserables, The Three Musketeers, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby – I had read them all. There were over 200 books on that list, and most of them were classics.

My English teacher in 9th grade, Mrs. Barlow, didn’t believe I had read them all, but she began to ask me about many of the specific books and found I could answer every question she had. When it came time for the next book report, she was in a quandary. We weren’t supposed to do book reports unless they were books from the recommended book list, and I had already read them all. She told me to read any book I wanted, and I felt quite special.

I had an entire bookshelf of books at home that were not on the recommended reading list. I wanted to choose the most incredible book, but simply couldn’t decide which book would live up to that honor.

I had a friend, we were both avid readers, and she shared a book with me. She loved to read “trashy romance novels” that she kept hidden from her mother. She alluded to me that it was a very “grown-up” book. I took that as a challenge. I was a good reader. I could read “grown-up books.”

I was quite naive for a 9th grader, and while I enjoyed the book, there were parts of it I didn’t quite understand, and there were other parts that seemed very grown-up, and were describing things that shocked me a bit. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, anyway. I decided this must be what “grown up” books were like. It was full of intrigue, romance, and yes, there was a lot of description of “grown up” things. It used words to describe body parts that I had never heard before, so in that way, it was very educational.

When the day came for me to stand up in front of the class and give my book report, my teacher looked at the cover of the book, and said that I would have to wait until the next day to give my report. She skipped my name and went on to the next student. I was surprised by this, and even more surprised when my teacher told me to come back to her class after school.

After school, I dutifully went to her classroom, and she gave me a sealed envelope that was addressed “To the parents of…” I wondered what I had done wrong.

At home, my mom always worked late, so I gave it to my dad. He opened it and read it slowly, and then asked me to go get the book I had used for my book report.

He looked long and hard at the cover, and then flipped through a couple of chapters. He asked me why I had chosen this book, and I told him that it was exciting, and I learned many new vocabulary words from it, and that it talked about things, grown-up things, I had never heard about.

I can’t really describe the look on his face. It was a mix of concern and amusement. I could tell that he really didn’t know quite what to say.

He asked why I didn’t read a book from the recommended reading list, and I told him that I had read all of them, and the teacher had said I could choose any book I wanted, and that my friend had loaned me this book.

Then he asked me to get him a piece of paper and a pen, and the wrote a note back to my teacher. At this point, I still didn’t know what the teacher’s note said. When my dad finished writing his note, he read the teachers note to me.

It said

“Dear Mr. & Mrs. Thomas,
I’m sorry to tell you that your daughter has chosen a very inappropriate book for her class book report. It is pure smut, and I know you would never have allowed her to read it. I cannot allow her to give a book report in front of the class on this book. She will have to read another book, and do a new book report.”

Then my dad read his reply before sealing it in an envelope.

It read

“Dear Mrs. Barlow,
I agree that this is not the most appropriate book for a 9th grader, but you did tell her that she could choose any book. Perhaps next time, you should say the book has to be approved before reading it for a book report.

You should know that I do not, and will not, censor what my child reads. My daughter struggles in every subject in school except reading. In reading, she excels. She loves to read. I am simply glad that she reads, and I will not tell her what she can and cannot read.

She should not be punished by being forced to write another report on a different book. She put in the time and effort to complete your assignment, and followed your instructions to read any book she chose. She spent hours reading this book, and preparing her book report according to your outline. I insist that you allow her to give the book report she has already prepared.

If you don’t feel it is appropriate to present it in class, please allow her to come to you during lunch or after school, and present it to you without any other students present.

I suggest that, in future, if you don’t mean “read any book you choose” that you shouldn’t say it. “

And with that, he handed me my book back.

And yes, I did stand in front of that teacher (during lunch) and told her all about the novel I had read, including detailed descriptions of sexual slavery, female domination, male anatomy, all with a trashy romance novel ending. Mrs. Barlow turned every shade of red you can imagine, but she listened to my report, and in the end, I got an A on it.


And yes, for my next book report, Mrs. Barlow told me I must get my book approved prior to reading it. I chose a book called “The Micronauts,” which was much more appropriate for a 14 year old girl. It was the book of the month with Scholastic, and had just been published. Mrs. Barlow was happy with this book choice.

To this day, I remember having a dad who was proud of me for being a good reader, who didn’t scold me for making a naive mistake, and who stood up to a teacher for me. I felt so empowered.

I also used that experience to realize that choosing what you read is an important decision, that not every book is worthy of my time, and that I alone make the decisions of what I should read. I also learned to never ask that friend to loan me another book.

In a time long before the internet, a simple card catalog and the Dewey Decimal System led me to the wonders of imagination and the universe. They sparked ideas I never would have considered otherwise. They let me see both sides of an argument, and make my own decision. They helped me find facts when others spouted statistics they didn’t source or verify. Reading not only taught me to use my imagination, but also to think critically about what others said and wrote as fact.

And to think – it all started in Mrs. Radar’s class, with We Look and See.

I looked. I saw. I read. I live.

My Advice to Young People

I spent my entire life working 60-80 hours per week, for no extra pay, and being so proud of my work ethic. I didn’t take vacations, hurried back from illnesses before I was ready (or came to work sick) and was very proud of my commitment and dedication. I worked in two different low-paying professions throughout my life because “I was making a difference” and “serving my community.”

If I could give any advice to young people today, I would say, “Don’t give your life away. Don’t be complicit in a lifestyle that always puts you last, and some noble cause first.” I’m not saying people should be selfish or self-centered, but to realize that people treat you the way you let them treat you, the way you encourage them to treat you, the way you direct them to treat you.

Your life is just as worthy if take time for yourself, your family, your friends, and set reasonable boundaries. It actually makes you a better person. You have more to give, because you haven’t been drained of your energy by an unbalanced life. Stand up and realized that living your own life is just as valuable, and that there are greater virtues than working hard and giving all.

I always thought that when I got to retirement age, there would be time to spend with family, to share good times with friends, to travel, to do all the things I never had time for before. Then I got sick, and realized my family is gone now, I never had the time to make deep, lasting friendships, I’m no longer able to travel, and I’m not able to do all those things I tucked-away until “later.”

For me, later isn’t coming. It is my one great regret in life.

“Life Unworthy of Living” Response

{This post was written in response to a news article on July 3, 2020, by the NY Post about a quadriplegic gentleman who was refused Covid-19 treatment simply because of his disability. https://nypost.com/2020/07/03/quadriplegic-dies-of-covid-19-after-hospital-refuses-treatment-family/ }

As a 5th grade teacher, one topic I had to teach each year towards the end of the year was about the Holocaust — in terms a 10 year old could comprehend. As a teacher, this was a difficult subject, but I took the importance of it very seriously. For most of my students, this was the first time they had ever heard of it. This subject opens a door, that once opened, can never be closed again. It marks a very specific end of innocence. I took this very seriously.

I was very careful to not show extremely graphic photos or list unfathomable atrocities. (They would see these soon enough as they grew older.) All parents had the right to opt their child out of this instruction. I never had even one parent opt out.

I always began my instruction by telling them a little story. You see, if I had been born back then, none of the surgeries I had that allowed me to walk or live a normal life would have been available. I would have ended up in one of the many “hospitals” (warehouses, actually) for people who were disabled. I never would have walked, and I would have been a burden to my family.

The Nazis, you see, didn’t actually start the Holocaust with the Jews (although their hatred of them was absolute.) They “tested the waters” with a different population. They started with the disabled, both physically and mentally disabled, and they made no distinction between babies, children, and adults. The word they used was “life unworthy of living.”

The doctors and nurses involved were complicit, as they chose which people, which babies, which children, which adults, were worthy of living, and which were not. They did not make these choices with deep caring concern for their patient’s well-being. They were not seeking to end their “misery.” They decided, very systematically, which were a burden on society, and they singled them out, and sent them to special “hospitals” for “treatment.”

They knew it was wrong, because they lied to the families of the “chosen” people. If they had thought it was the right thing to do, why not shout it from the rooftops, instead of using lies and subterfuge? They told families that these children and adults had suddenly taken ill, and needed special treatment. They put them on buses and sent them to special “hospitals.” Then they slowly, painfully, starved them to death.

In some cases, they injected drugs to cause the end more quickly, especially with vocal, mentally handicapped people. And they even used poison gas in rooms disguised as showers, because some of the medical staff’s mental health began to suffer from the slow, tedious starvation deaths. They decided to use something quicker, not to benefit these patients and end their despair, but to spare the medical staff from seeing the slow, agonizing deaths day-in and day-out.

Then they sent false letters and death certificates to the unknowing families, claiming these “chosen” people had died from natural causes like pneumonia.

These were not ignorant, uneducated people who did this. They were doctors and nurses, many of them were the top of their class and high ranking in their profession. Many convinced themselves they were doing this for the “greater good” and the benefit of mankind.

The chose themselves as the arbiter, the decider, the judge, and the executioner. They held themselves as the authority of who is worthy of life, and who is unworthy of “wasting” resources in our society. They assigned a value to human beings, and eliminated those they felt did not contribute significantly.

This series of mass murders by the best and the brightest of their medical institutions basically went unnoticed or un-confronted by society. Many who did know either felt helpless to stop it, or actually agreed with the decisions. And this was the start of it all, this thing we call the Holocaust. There was no uprising in response. There were no demonstrations. It happened quietly and without anyone choosing to stand up and say “this is wrong.”

And so, the Nazis felt empowered, the “Final Solution” began – this time it was directly aimed at the Jews, homosexuals, Poles, political dissidents, and others deemed to also be inferior and unworthy of life.

It has never been Man’s place to decide who is worthy of living, and who is not. This is a moral issue humans have struggled with for generations. I realize it is a narrow line between the rights of majority and the rights of “hopelessly” disabled. I realize that sometimes it is a choice made with the disabled person’s best interests in heart – not wanting them to physically continue suffering, but in this situation, that was not the case.

If this had been a case of one ventilator and two dying patients, and only one could be chosen to be saved, I would pity the medical professional who had to make that tragic decision and try not to second-guess it. But that wasn’t the case in this situation. The claim that there might not be enough ventilators was a “what if” decision — a “what if we use the ventilator on him, and then another more-worthy-of-life person then needs it?”

So in this case, I question the decision that was made. I’m not reminded of the kind, tormented family member who sees their family member in agonizing pain and decides to stop artificial means of respiration. Instead, I’m reminded of those fateful years back in the 1930s, when doctors and nurses, encouraged and instructed by a political machine and one man’s blithering insanity, to decide what makes a human life worthy of living.

I’m reminded of what happens when humanity turns a blind-eye to mere humans making the choices of God and the universe.

If you read history, then you know the phrase “life unworthy of life” (in German it is lebensunwertes leben.) It was a Nazi designation for the segments of the populace which, according to the Nazi regime, had no right to live, and who were targeted to be euthanized by the state, usually through the compulsion of their caretakers. They were seen as inferior and unworthy of life, and were treated accordingly.

“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” Make no mistake, I do not compare those medical professionals who decided that life as a quadriplegic was not life worthy of life to the Nazi regime. But I do see that slippery slope of mere mortals deciding the value of life based on their preconceived notions of who is “worthy of life,” and who is not. It is a line, once crossed, that becomes blurred beyond recognition.

Welcome to My World

Starting a blog is an idea I’ve thought about for a while. I enjoy sharing my ideas and experiences with others. I realized the therapeutic power of writing as far back as 4th grade. It is a format that has served me well throughout my life.

I especially want to thank my friend Leeann for encouraging me to start this blog. The support of friends is what makes life worth living.

And so I begin. I hope you enjoy the show!