In a few weeks I will be making my return to school. For fifteen years, I have seen my teaching skills grow and by the same token, I feel that perhaps I have not grown enough as a teacher. Many students have passed through my classes, and I am blessed that I have helped many of them. They have arrived in the country alone or accompanied by their parents. Working with these new arrivals for an ESL teacher, who has been given the task to teach the Common Core, is, to say the least, difficult. Right now the teaching profession is at a crossroads. What to do when many of us think that technology is essential in the classroom yet not enough support is given to implement it in our jobs. Our challenge today is not just in our classrooms, but with policies like the Common Core, reformers who prescribe solutions for better teaching techniques yet lack any educational perspective, the anti-tenure haters who think this is the only solution for better schools, and the union busters who claim that teacher unions are the root of all evil. But despite all the nonsense that is happening in our teaching profession, I have not lost the hope that a better solution is on the way. I am the eternal optimist who feels that we are different, but in the end, we all want the best for our children. Writing this post brings me memories of the day when the Cuban-American poet, Richard Blanco, read his poem " One Today" during President Obama's second inaugural. As I re-read his poem again, it gives me hope because he speaks of one nation, one hope that we all can believe in and share for a better tomorrow.
Richard Blanco
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