My Story and It's not just the programs

[Cidsa]

Hello, I've been reading about these things here for a while and I believe that the teen help industry alone isn't all to blame.
I blame misinformation, uninformed doctors/practioners, social workers, etc as well.

When I was 11-12 my mother got a new boyfriend and lucky me, he was abusive. Most of the time he just verbally abused me and shoved me around, but occasionally it would get into full out hitting. So I told the counsellor at school and she in turn told social services.

That's where the trouble began. I got a social worker and everyone began to tell me I was wrong. I was the one who was the problem and that if I didn't change that'd be it. So I was forced onto Prozac and it made me very irritable. So I was switched Paxil, which has been addicting and still affecting my life horribly.

Anyways, I went to therapy and took the medication. However, things at home never improved. I never felt the need to do anything at all but sit alone on my computer. I wouldn't do chores, I wouldn't talk to anyone, I wouldn't even change my clothes or shower. I just did next to nothing. This did not make my stepdad very happy, in which case he would take the computer and most of the time in my fight to keep it, I would get hurt.
Basically at this point I had no friends at all anymore and I was completely alone because my parents just didn't care. So the computer was the only thing I had that made me feel happy at all.
So when they took it, it was like being completely cut off from the entire world.

Things just got worse and worse. One day at school they thought I was trying to jump off the roof (i wasn't) and i was expelled and sent to secure treatment. Which is a place where you are under somewhat "lockdown". I was only there 3 days. It wasn't completely awful, no abuse or anything. But being under lockdown is not very fun.

Then I had a lady who would come and visit me once and a while to talk. Things at that point were really escalating. Then one day I just snapped and smashed a bowl and started cutting myself with the pieces..in front of that lady. Which was obviously a really bad idea. So my social worker came in with the police. They grabbed me and cuffed me and hauled me off to the car. Then I had to sit in the back of a police car with my hands behind my back for two hours. Where they took me to secure treatment again.

I was in secure for about a month, which seemed more like 6. It wasn't all bad, there were some cool kids there. Only one seemed really messed up (meth addict), the others were okay. I must say that after being locked down for such a long period of time really wears on you.

Then I was let out and I went home. Things stayed the same. Then I was told I was being sent away to a group home. So I went there for a few months and looking back it wasn't bad at all, but all I wanted to do was go home. After my stay there I was taken to a place called TRACC which is on Hull campus (in Calgary). It's a behavioural adjustment place, but it's not abusive. It's just a horribly concieved idea.

TRACC basically made you have a really strict routine, you had to go to the school on campus (which is only up to grade 9, I was in grade 10 at the time), etc. If you got in trouble (which happened every day, it was impossible otherwise) they sent you to your room. If you really messed up, you had to sit in a cold room and write a long report about how you screwed up and how you could fix it the next time.
I ran away at one point and lived on the streets but that didn't last very long. It was an incredibly cold, bitter winter (at least -25 to -30) so I had to go back.
Also, you HAD to go to therapy, otherwise you would be put into that damned room with that report and have to do hours of chores.

The worst part about it was that you were inside most of the time in a small, very institutional building. They allowed you to have whatever you wanted in your room, including your stereo (unless you were in trouble) so that was okay. I read a helluva lot of books that's for sure.
Also, the staff didn't have one set of rules. Every staff had a different idea of what was right and what was wrong. One staff member would send you to your room for swearing, while another wouldn't. One staff member hated me because I told her that religion is mind control and that it's all just BS..She found every way she could to send me to my room.
Etc etc etc.

Throughout all this, it was always my fault. I was the one who wasn't taking charge, I was the one who made them get angry, etc etc. Not once did they ever wonder why I called the cops on my stepfather so much or why I was extremely withdrawn and skipping school 4 days of the week.
Sure, I have severe manic depression, OCD and probably some other crap, but it's hard to do anything about it when all you get is yelled at and told what a worthless piece of shit you are.

So after TRACC, I went home and not even a month later my stepdad pulled it again. I pulled a knife on him and phone the police. Then he literally ripped the phone out of the wall (completely severing the cords). The police called back however and I went downstairs to answer. When they came I went to my dad's house and I've been here since.

The worst part is my mother defrauded the government over this and she got child support when she wasn't supposed to. So it was really hard for me and my dad, I have a really hard time working (or doing much of anything really) so we had very little money.

My mother still treats me like dirt. I try to be civil and maybe even nice but I'm still worthless to her. She's giving a lot of money so my sister can go to a private school and live in the city, and what do I get? zilch.

She also still seems to think that I "need" the paxil. Even after all the evidence I've shown her proving otherwise. It's also apparent that things took a turn for the worst AFTER I began the paxil.

Anyways, all I want to say is that it's not only the bad programs in the wrong. It's the ENTIRE system. Social workers never actually listen to the kid, they listen to the parents. In my case my stepdad would lie and my mother would lie AS WELL, right in front of me. No matter how much I argued that they were lying and even when my sister said she saw it, nobody believed me.

The kid is always the one to blame, it's nobody else's fault huh? Pft. [ This Message was edited by: Cidsa on 2005-06-30 19:17 ]

[Nihilanthic]

BTW all, Cidsa is my friend and I told her about this forum, so be nice. And dont blame her for my behavior either! :smile:

Zany fun. It was a first - even Ben Franklin never arranged for something like this, and he was full of himself.

http://media.orkut.com/writers/0009.html' target='_new'>John Gorenfeld

[Antigen]

"Most frightening words in the English language; I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."--Ronald Reagan (hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day!)

Ya' know, when I first got into this issue, I thought it would be a matter of getting enough people together to credibly tell the story. Then the public at large would eventually catch onto what's going on and take various steps to put an end to it.

What I've discovered, though, is that the Programs are really not that far out of line w/ the rest of society. As schools and the rest of society become more stiffling and less compassionate, more kids are either breaking down or refusing to be broken. Either one will set you on a very bumpy path. One glaring clue to what's going on is the professional educators now declaring that over half of kids are abnormal. (in other words, not doing well under the curent system and, therefore, in need of some kind of treatment or tinkering or coercion)

It's a much harder problem for most people to acknowledge. It's not just these whacked out zealots at fault. It's all of us on some level. So is there a chance at something like Prag Spring for us (sans the burning man) or the Velvet Revolution? Can we pull it out of the shitter in a civilized manner? I hope so.

The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics
is often very tolerant and human. But when fanatics are on top,
there is no limit to oppression.

--H.L. Mencken

[Janet]

Ginger, as a former 6th grade teacher and the wife of a former 8th grade history and English teacher, I know that there are bad professional educators and there always have been.  Good Lord our children unfortunately had some lulus! Fortunately they had some good ones too.

 I just wanted to note that professional educators who state that over half of the children are abnormal just can't be right, because, by definition, the norm has to be the majority, if not the vast majority.  So, by definition, if half are abnormal then they are normal.  (Have I confused you?)  Then teachers and schools of education will need to find ways to teach them.  

 There is one problem that is making headlines.  Robert Kennedy, Jr. is presenting it by making us aware of mercury in our air, water, food supply, and immunizations.  It has long been known that mercury causes brain damage/disfunction. He claims that it is causing an alarming increase in Autism.  This may or may not be true, but Autism and related syndromes like Asperger's Syndrome are being diagnosed more and more frequently.  I'm wondering if it isn't the disease of the 2000's, like hypoglycemia was the disease of the 70's, and total body yeast infections the disease of the 80's, etc

 In fact my grandson was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome because his teachers were not teaching him to read.  So my husband who never taught primay classes started tutoring our grandson. I gave my husband instructions on teaching beginning reading, and in less than one year he brought our grandson up to grade level.  
We had to fight the teachers tooth and nail to get them to provide adequate instruction in the classroom to supplement my husband's lessons.  There is no way our grandson had Asperger's Syndrome or any other form of Autism, but it was a nice excuse for his inability to read or their inability to teach.

[Nihilanthic]

Aspergers or things on the mild end of the autsitic spectrum are diagnosed (if not defined, bsaed on what Ive seen looking over shoulders) by lack of communication skills. Be they going out (speaking, body language, etc) or coming IN (all sorts of verbal communication such as reading, listening, picking up on the body language of others, and especially implications and nonliteral speech).

I was diagnosed, but now myself and the NC Autism Society thinks its bullshit. Frankly, It doesnt mean jack shit to me, but I do know I did have some severe social issues growing up, primarily thanks to the school system. Theres a fucking pipeline where kisd are sent down and everyone has to make their damn buck off of them at the expense of the child or someone else.

If I wasnt always clamming up as a small child because of bullies, apathetic or outright malicious teachers, and actually HAD a father figure Id probably be less fucked up than I am now. However, I am able to function more or less alone as a result of this, and able to just shut my emotions off. Probably useful skills if I plan on staying in america for too much longer the way things are going.

Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people
http://laissezfairebooks.com/product.cfm?op=view&pid=FF7485&aid=10247' target='_new'> Thomas Jefferson.

[Troll Control]

What you are all seeing (accurately) is an incredible upturn in the number of cases of autism.  This is probably reducible to the use of thymerisol, a mercury-base preservative used in children's vaccines.

"Mercury?" you ask.  Yes, mercury.  For the better part of the past two decades, doctors, with the support of the FDA, have been injecting little babies with the neurotoxin mercury.  Some vaccines have so much mercury in them that they would be harmful to a 550 pound adult, and it's being injected into a child that weighs between 8 and 30 pounds.

Many studies have been completed on the neurotoxic effects of mercury and, not surprisingly, the signs and symptoms of autism are identical to mercury-induced neurotoxicity.

Autism, rarely diagnosed before 1980, has become a pandemic as American pharaceutical companies spread thymerisol containing vaccines throughout the "3rd world."  An example:  In China, autism was relatively unheard of until the 1980's.  Around the time that the Chinese government began a vaccination program using U.S. vaccines containing thymerisol, there began an uptick in autism cases.  Today China reports TEN MILLION CASES of autism in children and young adults to the age of twenty.

Unfortunately, the scenario playing out in China is not confined there or to the "3rd world."  It has reached epidemic status right here at home.  It is estimated that autism, rarely even heard of prior to thymerisol containing vaccines, now affects 1 of every 166 children born right here in the good 'ol U.S. of A.  Furthermore, it is estimated that it costs $100,000 per year to educate these afflicted children.

It is now playing out at the highest levels of government, with the CDC fighting tooth-and-nail to discredit the very fine researchers who have completed these longitudinal studies of thymerisol poisoning and to protect the drug companies that produced it.  At the same time, the Bush administration is trying to indemnify pharmaceutical companies against lawsuits that stem from harm caused by their products.

It is just beginning to be talked about now, but it will mushroom into a huge issue in the near future.  When one considers the noble cause America has undertaken to vaccinate the children of the world against preventable death has actually resulted in the poisoning of two generation of the world's children, it is a crushing blow to America and our foreign policy objectives.  

How will poor countries deal with hundreds of thousands of autistic kids that require ten times the resources that other kids require, when they can't keep the "healthy" ones fed, sheltered and educated?

[Antigen]

Janet, I don't think it's so much a matter of bad individual educators as it is a bad system getting worse. The problems you're describing w/ your grandson seem to be typical. Tell me, how much support did you have from administration in trying to get the teachers to help him w/ his reading? If the object of the excercise were really to teach litteracy (as opposed to, say, garnering special needs funding while furthering union objectives) then wouldn't those obstinate teachers who you had to constantly pressure have suffered some consequence as a result of their poor performance? Bet they didn't. Bet they had tacit approval and support from higher up.

Have you read anything by John Taylor Gatto? Check this guy out http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ Very thought provoking stuff on the nature and aims of our government schooling system.

You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot
easier.
--GW Büsh, Governor of Texas. Governing Magazine, 7/98

[Deborah]

More on the mercury/vaccine issue, and how it may be a factor in the increase in 'behavioral' problems:
http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... t=10#53396

In reality, these so-called interventions are large-scale experiments conducted at the expense of our young children, who are showing an increase in childhood cancers and other chronic diseases such as asthma and diabetes. Why were these untoward policies authorized? In one word: greed. Dr. Kate Scannell recently reported that, "According to confidential documents recently acquired and reviewed by the New York Times, the U.S. drug company trade association PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) intends to spend $150 million in the current year in hopes of influencing our domestic and foreign policy makers. The Times reports that PhRMA's budget for such lobbying activities during the fiscal year beginning July 1 represents a 23 percent increase over the prior year. The plan includes a $72.7 million allocation for lobbying at the federal level, $49.7 million for state lobbying efforts, and $4.9 million to lobby the Food and Drug Administration."
http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... =110#53181

I recently found this article on the connection between Autism/ADD/ADHD and Overgrowth of Candida (yeast) in the bowel, which when treated greatly diminishes or lessens the undesirable behavior.
http://www.healing-arts.org/children/an ... tm#wethink
http://www.adhdrelief.com/candida.html

"Post-Traumatic School Disorder"
http://www.lewrockwell.com/wallace/wallace127.html

[Janet]

I disagree that the system is bad and getting worse.  My husband and I had a few bad teachers, taught with bad teachers, and our children had a few "teachers from Hell".  The biggest problem is that too many teachers are incompetent and so are the administrators.  The problem is we can't get enough quality teachers and with school funding going down, fewer are willing to take on the job.  And don't tell me about the three months vacation! Good teachers work long hours during the school year and over the summer.

Few teachers belong to unions, unless you consider professional organizations unions.  Then you would need to consider the AMA, the ANA, the ADA, and the Bar Association unions.

I think most teachers who are not teaching the WHOLE class are not willing to put out the effort required for the job.  They have a very simple idea of what teaching is.  On my first day of school I knew that was to be my occupation.  All through school I made mental notes of the WRONG things teachers did as well as the clever, creative and wise things they did.  I noticed the lazy teachers then and unfortunately, they are still around.

Homeschooling is not the answer.  It is no different than behavior modification boarding schools.  Most parents home school to keep their children from learning new ideas, not so different than Cross Creek Manor keeping students isolated with sensory  deprivation of current affairs, current music and entertainment, current styles of clothing and speech, etc.  Homeschooling is to keep the family's religion and social mores the only thing the child hears.  Also the child meets no one that was not preapproved by the parents.

Now to John Taylor Gatto.  As far as I am concerned, he's a first-rate crackpot.  I read the whole prologue and I would take up too much of your bandwidth to refute it.  I was amused close to the end of the prologue when he stated that he may have made a 'few' factual errors!  

I was taught John Dewey's progressive education at UCLA by a professor who used the most archaic teaching methods possible.  We had to memorize John Dewey's  preamble.  Since that was over 50 years ago, it has escaped my memory, but what he printed in his book didn't ring a bell. By the way none of us thought John Dewey was the answer and I would have thought that John Gatto would have loved John Dewey.  He really wasn't for pidgeonholing.

I assume that he offers some solution to his problem in the  book, but he doesn't give a clue about such a solution in the prologue.  Should we become like Afghanistan or Pakistan where schooling leaves a lot to be desired.  Maybe we should be like Africa where there is no school at all.

He bemoans that we have lenghened childhood so kids can go to school.  Perhaps we should go back to the 19th century where primary school-aged children worked in factories, and where children as young as 5 work in rug making factories in India and the Middle East today.  Also he complains about pidgeonholing our students.  It was almost like he had just finished reading Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World".

Finally, our schools can't be all bad because we have been a very innovative country.  Other countries copy our designs and inventions.  Not all of our inventors dropped out of school.  Bill Gates may have dropped out of college, but he sure hired plenty of college graduates with advanced degrees.

[Nihilanthic]

The school system which I just went through is pretty full of crap.

Highschool is too much about memorizing erroneous shit... a lot of the education is ASININE to the vast majority of the students there. If I was able to focus on things of my interest, such as those for a future career, Id be a lot better off and a HELL of a lot more interested in it.

WTF do I need to study literature for? Why do I learn imaginary numbers before I know how to balance a checkbook and do finances? Why do I need to do quadratic equations when I cant do compound intrest?

The social structure in highschool, the erroneous bullshit that goes on, the harassment and violence (and the apathy I see from the administrators and teachers) and the gang problems... its a joke. GRADES FOR GYM CLASS? Good lord. Abstinance ONLY sex ed? Haha!

Oh, and the authoritarian nature of it really just grated on my nerves - but fighting back was good practive for growing up.

Fix all those problems, and make it more like a college, with elective classes and no bullshit or arbitrary goals to be met, and I'll bitch a little less. And KICK THE DAMN GANGSTA WANNNAES OUT.

Forgive, O Lord, my little joke on Thee and I'll  forgive Thy great big one on me.
--Robert Frost, American poet

[Antigen]

On 2005-07-05 23:59:00, Janet wrote:

"I disagree that the system is bad and getting worse.  My husband and I had a few bad teachers, taught with bad teachers, and our children had a few "teachers from Hell".  The biggest problem is that too many teachers are incompetent and so are the administrators.  The problem is we can't get enough quality teachers and with school funding going down, fewer are willing to take on the job.  And don't tell me about the three months vacation! Good teachers work long hours during the school year and over the summer.

I agree that teachers tend to be very cool people and very dedicated. I don't think they're generally overpaid.

But where is school funding going down? Last I looked, our public school system provides just about the most expensive education per student on Earth.

Homeschooling is not the answer.  It is no different than behavior modification boarding schools.  Most parents home school to keep their children from learning new ideas, not so different than Cross Creek Manor keeping students isolated with sensory  deprivation of current affairs, current music and entertainment, current styles of clothing and speech, etc.  Homeschooling is to keep the family's religion and social mores the only thing the child hears.  Also the child meets no one that was not preapproved by the parents.

Wow! Have you got some wild misconceptions about homeschooling! I homeschool my kids because I don't want them cloistered, confined and taught to accept it as normal. It's understandable, though. The religious nuts tend to be the most vocal busybodies.

Finally, our schools can't be all bad because we have been a very innovative country.  Other countries copy our designs and inventions.

You just made that up, huh? And, of course, you didn't actually read the book you're now trying to discuss. If you did, you'd know that the Dewey references came from internal documents, not his PR material.

Let me ask you this. Do you honestly believe that, on average, a highschool graduate today is as well educated as a typical highschool graduate from, say, 20, 30 or 50 years ago? If so, can you explain how? Cause I can't seem to find any who are even very much aware of how ignorant they are.

Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name. Thy kingdom nada, thy will be nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.
--Ernest Hemingway, American author

_________________
Ginger Warbis ~ Antigen
Drug war POW
Seed `71 - `80
Straight, Sarasota
   10/80 - 10/82
Anonymity Anonymous
return undef() if /coercion/i;

[Deborah]

**I can't seem to find any who are even very much aware of how ignorant they are.

Well, here's one who seems to....

"You have given us the minimum required attention and education that is needed to master any station at any McDonald's anywhere."
~Eagleville (Tenn.) High School valedictorian Abraham Stoklasa, on his alma mater.

Aftert Stoklasa's speech, school officials temporarily withheld his diploma.
[In Newsweek, 6-6-05]

[Janet]

Ginger, right now I will try to answer just one or two of your questions/statements and I will try now to ramble all over the place.

First of all, in the 2003-2004 school year in Oregon, virtually all of the school districts did not have enough funds to finish the school year, and had to close the schools early.
This year they have cut out programs, & school nurses, and raised class size. (Now let me digress a moment about class size.  I was blessed with 43  6th graders my first year.  So when a 3rd grade teacher moans about having 25 pupils, their story touches my heart.  Have you any idea how much paper work 43 eleven to twelve year olds can generate? A lot more than 25 3rd graders and it is more complicated to evaluate.) Still, the Oregon legislature with the skinflint Republican house is underfunding education.  By the way Oregon does not adequately tax large corporations.  In fact Oregon hardly taxes them at all!  That would be a good place to start for school funds.

Governor Terminator in Cal-lee-forn-ya is also finding that running the state without adequate taxation isn't as easy as he claimed it would be when he was campaigning.  He too is cutting school funds.

I started school in the first grade.  (That's how old I am.  Kindergarted didn't exist in my town.) My first 11 years of schooling was in a small working class suburb of Cleveland.  Shortly before the start of my senior year my parents moved to Newport Beach, California and I spent a dreadful year at Newport Harbor High School.  Believe me it was a real culture shock to go from working class to nouveau riche Newport Beach.  After graduation I entered UCLA.

I got a better education in Ohio for several reasons.  Even so, I was not well prepared for UCLA primarily because I was young, but also because my generation was very sheltered from adult thought, problems, and faults.  Somehow the professors of freshmen knew this and they helped to bring us up to par.  A few teachers didn't.  My English 1A would give us composition topics like, "America's foreign policy in the Middle East"  and then the next week she would suggest "America's foreign policy in the Far East".  I had no idea where the Middle East was or what the heck "foreign policy" was.  The thing was I discovered that there were more freshmen who were less prepared than I.  My point being that those high school graduates that prepared for college in the 1950's were probably not as well prepared as college prep high school students today.  

By the 1960's high school started giving advanced classes to college bound students. The brighter students could take more difficult physics, chemistry or math classes.  As time went on kids were taking pre-calculus or calculus in high school.  The very, very bright sister of the girl I hope one day to see on the forum passed freshmen classes by taking tests before entering U.C.Davis.  

My granddaughter in New Jersey will be taking some advanced classes when she enters the ninth grade next fall.  But, she doesn't have the scholarship to take advanced placement classes.  Now there are three different levels of college prep classes in many high schools. The brighter you are the more you're punished!  I'm joking

There is one difference in the course of study for the college bound.  Requirements have changed over the years.  We were required to have two years of a language and we needed more once we were in college.  Now it seems they don't even want you to have a foreign language.  I'll  need to see what my grandchildren will be studying, but it seems that math and science are the most important requirements now.

In the 50's high schools tried to give some kind of education that would be useful to those not going to college.  I don't know if that was successful or if high schools have much of a program today.  Most of my Ohio classmates went right to work, even those who prepared to go to college.  For them college was never an option.  Many went to work in the factories and steel mills in Cleveland.  What saddened me was that the bright ones who prepared for college but couldn't go, did not keep an active intellect.  One of my best friends seemed so dense and uninformed, and she was so bright in high school.

Let me tell you, there have always been those who don't enjoy school or attempt to learn anything.  Ancient Romans complained about the lazy youth who do not want to excel.  If Jay Leno had the Late Show in the 1950s, he could have roamed the New York streets and found dunderheads like the ones he questions today.  I don't know if you have ever seen his questioning people on the street, but comedians couldn't write funnier stuff.  Unfortunately, those being questioned were dead serious.

[Anonymous]

The financial woe's of education are a national epidemic, as education and politics really is a problem.  But I will say for the most part teachers (most of them) are doing the work of God, I can't imagine they are getting into the field for money it is not a huge paying job, it is more rewarding I feel making a difference in the lives of Children.  

Homeschooling is an option that I am not fond of - although some folks have been succesful at it.  I would think though that although someone might have the inteligence to homeschool does not mean they are balanced in other ways, which could be damaging as well, their is a whole social aspect of homeschooling that good parents pay attention to and include their children in the community in many ways.

I would not bash all Special Educators I would be more concerned with the dollars being spent appropriatly to service children with disabilities in our schools, and also with elected officials who do not for the most part care about these populations.
Andrea

[Anonymous]

First, thanks to cidsa for starting this discussion.  

Re: "as opposed to, say, garnering special needs funding while furthering union objectives)"

That's hitting the nail on the head. My husband and I are both teachers, and between the political and inflammatory BS of the national teachers' union and the way schools are funded, teachers are on self-defense mode all the time.

If we ask for any kind of evaluation of a student, we become subject to ridiculous federal guidelines that prevent us (and the school district) from ever again enforcing classroom discipline. Of course, the kids figure that out and pretty soon 90% of our time is taken up trying to keep 10% of the students from burning the place down. That's all if we even manage to get the child evaluated. Ever tried to get a psych eval? It doesn't happen because it's expensive, and because once a student is diagnosed with any kind of disorder, the district is obliged to foot the bill to address it.

Then there's the union: Any reasonable proposition that includes a more realistic approach is shot down amid cries that the sky is falling. Their funding---from my pocket--goes largely to lobbying for things many teachers don't even want.

It's not about the kids at all. Even opposition to home schooling (by school districts) has more to do with the money-grab than concern for the kids. The fact is that most teachers are so disheartened by the ineffectual approach of their districts, they become resigned and end up hoping they can just make a small difference on a day by day basis. We are allowed little or no creativity or innovation, and we have little or no time for the kids who need it most.

My husband's days average 10 hours---that's before he brings papers home to grade. The elementary school administrators show little or no interest in any of his ideas, and the teachers and adminstrators are always in opposition, with no trust possible, because of the attitude of the unions and the administrators.

Sorry, guess I'm venting a little here. My point? We could all be doing a far better job, and the kids can tell.