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Thank you for engaging, Jody! We appreciate you naming this; clearly, the teaching profession grinds down teachers of ALL colors, and as you imply in this second comment, Black teachers face the same grind that is colored (if you will) by anti-Black racism that is endemic in our society. We are very pleased to have brought a story to you and our listeners that resonates deeply.

This episode got me. I wish I could shake Ms. Douglas’s hand and thank her. I too suffer anxiety/depression from this job. I’m not the only one. Wish I had a grain of her power!

My experience has been awful as well. I have a grievance under my belt due to mass bullying by a supervisor–such as being told I had a certain neurological disorder, being publicly shamed for test scores, and unfortunately, so much more. I am so unsupported and have been fumbling in the dark.

I went into this so naive. I look at my original employee badge and see the proud person that finally graduated college and is about to enter a career to be proud of. Now? I feel like I’m selling my soul bit by bit, every week to the corrupt system of public education. I see that pipeline and I’m like an employee at Waterworld guiding kids on when to go down “the slide.”

I don’t want to disappoint my family by quitting.
It feels so wrong what we do to kids. We gotta create something new.

Thanks. This episode made me feel normal. Appreciate your work.

Thank you for this comment! We hope that our discussion topics have implications beyond the classroom. After all, teaching is community, human work.Definitely interested in learning more about an upstream battle is there any way you could send us a copy? It sounds amazing.

If you’re interested, I wrote a book entitled An Upstream Battle, John Parker’s Personal War on Slavery that’s about John Parker, a Black abolitionist. Parker was initially reluctant to help runaways since he had worked for a year to gain his own freedom and didn’t want to risk being enslaved again. However he was talked into helping the first time and after that helped many hundreds of runaways escape slavery. He became so audacious that he once rescued a child from the home of a slaveholder in the middle of the night.

An excerpt of An Upstream Battle and free curriculum for use of the book in middle school classrooms is available at: AnneStantonPublications.com. I would love to hear what you think of the story of John Parker and your thoughts about the curriculum.

a. Hoping there is analyzation of the in person grind – going to school from sun up to sun down – is this effective? Responsive? Or just abusive/guaranteed to wear everyone out.
b. Janky Facebook aka Schoolology – hahahaha yes – a Tech support person actually told me once that the interface was designed to reflect the original FB layout so it would be familiar to navigate. Too bad they haven’t updated the layout to be more user friendly – you know, like how FB has reinvented their interface 100 times since this similar iteration??
c. Let these LMSs work for us!!!! Make them compete!! Also – why use Schoology when we LIVE in Google…Google Classroom is way more user friendly and communicates with all docs, forms and sheets we have .net accounts for! Who is signing these contracts with these companies – and do they consider other partnerships that already exist?
d. Having an entertaining/engaging/creative/humorous personality makes teaching online so much more effective…lucky to those who have that naturally. Would love to establish a vulnerability PD that empowers less naturally inclined teachers to tap into a more performative side – in a way that is still authentic.

I could say more…but thanks for the affirmative/entertaining cast to listen to why troubleshooting Schoology issues for my team.

For those interested, here is a link to a Google Drive folder with more information (in need of updating) – https://drive.google.com/…/1w9aT1RWYyZVveglYpoYA-rV-Z0KduVs…

Here is a link to the petition, currently at over 5,000 signatures – https://www.change.org/p/tattnall-county-board-of-education…

Here is a link to a Facebook group in support of COACH Huerta, currently at over 450 members (updates/media coverage posted here) – https://www.facebook.com/groups/225166398439449/