Thursday a.m. Idea Post 2/12

So much of what kind of person and how I function creatively began in my early years of elementary school. While developing my creative skills early on, I remember relying heavily on how the teacher would compose things on the board, what colors she used, and how she would cut things out and mix them with other art utensils. Each assignment and activity there were always certain creative and visual skills that were tested; the basis of our future in the visual world. However, with recent changes in our country’s economy the public school system has taken the hardest hit in this drastic downfall.
Starting this year, 2009, Chesterfield County in Virginia will be cutting about 500 jobs from the public school system in order to survive this economic crisis. The first of those 500 jobs that will be cut are teachers who have yet to meet their tenure year; the fourth year in a teacher’s career at one school. The teachers that are fresh out of college and eager to pursue their career in educating the young minds of our future. This is where the problem is presents itself. Who will be left to teach in the school system? With all of the first to third year teachers out only leaves the jaded or semi jaded middle aged teachers who lack that certain amount of enthusiasm that help children thrive.
What could this mean for not only the future business world but also the visual arts world when our children are being taught by teachers who don’t necessarily want to be in the education profession anymore? I have recently spoken to a few teachers in Chesterfield County to get a feel for where they stand on the issue. There are a few teachers in their late twenties who will reach their tenure year next year and now go to teach each day with that rotten feeling in their stomachs that this could be taken away from them any day. There are a good amount of teachers who are approaching retirement in roughly two to three years who think it is more appropriate to make a retirement and severance package deal for those and leave the existing jobs for the younger teaching generation. My sister is a kindergarten teacher in the county and like several others at her school her job is up in the air. When I talked to her about it she voiced her concerns about how the environment in the schools would change for the kids when class sizes doubled and teaching quality was lowered.