[Dori Green]

When I was making $17K (not a typo) as a Title I Remedial Writing tutor, the teachers in a small upstate NY town were all making $60K+.  I observed them ridiculing a 12-year-old who obviously had physical coordination problems:  it was not that he didn't know how to write, he physically could not make letters that anyone else could read.  The teacher (male) screamed to the class with me right there that he was stupid, he obviously came from a stupid family, and none of them would ever amount to anything.  I reported his behavior and my report was ignored.

After six months of them not giving me any instruction or guidance, they complained that I was not teaching structure the same way the English teacher was teaching it, so I should sit in on her class.  She perched on a high stool writing on a transparency.  She never once glanced at the board or at her class.  If she had, she might have noticed they were all sleeping -- and who could blame them, her writing was so small that even the people in the front row could not read it.

Schools are not only depressing, the whole system is disgusting.  I would home-school and I'm working now to help organize a local home-schooling support network -- a task that's being blocked at every turn by the school-connected political machine.  But that's not directly TW related.

Except for the job security that comes from having an upcoming generation who can read.

Dori Green