Confessions of a "bad" teacher

In case you've missed it, there's a really good opinion piece in the NYT by William Johnson, a special ed teacher who tells it like it is when it comes to the pressures of teaching:

"The truth is, teachers don’t need elected officials to motivate us. If our students are not learning, they let us know. They put their heads down or they pass notes. They raise their hands and ask for clarification. Sometimes, they just stare at us like zombies. Few things are more excruciating for a teacher than leading a class that’s not learning."

All this outcry about "public schools being failures" fail to recognize, like Johnson points out, that we'll always have different outcomes if we have different inputs. Children in wealthier schools, with more educated parents, do better. Look in our county, who are our winners in the math and science competitions? You can't blame poverty on the teacher. So far, all it's done is create an antagonistic -- and completely undeserved -- culture of blaming teachers.