Florida's teachers are breaking my heart.
First, I hear with my own ears teachers coaching students as young as 8 years old to lobby legislators for -- let's call a spade a spade -- their own selfish interests. Now I find some 1,000 of them in the Miami-Dade school system choosing to protest passage of the performance-pay bill by calling in sick.
For example, on Monday 48 of 80 teachers at Charles R. Hadley Elementary in West Miami-Dade failed to show. The school canceled classes for the day. But there were many other schools and teachers involved.
The "sickout" actually started Friday, the day the House signed the bill known known as SB 6 and sent it to the governor. The school superintendent placed an automatic call in to district employees, asking them to consider "the safety of the students." The call didn't stop a large teacher absence at West Kendall's Dr. Manuel C. Barreiro Elementary.
Now there's a dandy example to set for students. Don't like the system? Walk out on your responsibilities.
As a mother, grandmother and lifelong friend of the teaching profession, I admit I'm losing the faith. I don't understand how a teacher's bad behavior wins sympathy for his or her cause. Teachers, here's where I'm coming from:
- You call in to your school and lie about why you can't go to work. Meanwhile, I'm trying to teach my children not to tell lies. Don't tell me how noble and important your action is. Tell me how you're going to square your lie with the moral fiber I'm trying to grow in my kids.
- And, sure as the sun comes up in the morning, you're going to justify your lie by explaining that children need to learn protest, that you're teaching them how to stick up for themselves, how democracy works in America. I've heard this one before and it's poppycock. Certainly I want my children to understand and employ protest. But I want them to do it when they feel it in their hearts. I want them to act on their own commitment, their own outrage, their own sense of righteous indignation -- not yours.
Meanwhile, Gov. Charlie Crist apparently thinks teachers telling lies is an "understandable" protest.
Doesn't anybody put students first, even the governor? The Miami Herald reported that Gov. Crist encouraged teachers to go there even before the first sick call came in Monday. If that isn't a Hollywood-style preview of the main feature -- the performance-pay-bill veto coming soon to a Capitol near you -- then I'm ready to call in sick, too.
Contact Executive Editor Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com, or at (850) 583-1823.
