Reposted with permission.
Badass Teachers teach, love and nurture children everyone has given up on, in good times and bad, children with disabilities, children who have been kicked out of their families, children who can't sit still, children who have seen unimaginable horrors, children who are homeless, children who are under constant stress, along with children who have happy lives, and happy families. They teach and love them all, and protect and defend them from physical threats and the threat of tests and assessments which humiliate them and destroy their love of learning
Badass Teachers stayed in the nation's toughest neighborhoods when everyone else left, amidst drug epidemics and drive by shootings, factory closing and fires, turning schools and their classrooms into refuges and place of hope, only to see themselves attacked for failing to reduce the "achievement gap" by people who were in fancy colleges while they went to work every day , and then watching the same people close the schools they had devoted their lives to making work.
Badass Teachers protect their students every day, even at the risk of their own lives, and in Columbine and Newtown made the ultimate sacrifice, drawing upon their deep sense of mission and a love supreme. These heroic teacher stand as symbols of tens of thousands of teachers throughout the nation who have disarmed students, broken up fights, stopped gang wars from breaking out, put themselves in harms way in riots and brawls. This is the Badass ethos. This is what is REALLY means to put students first.
I realize that I am a BAT...and have been for a very long time. I get pushed by other teachers to say what they would like to but are afraid to, and then get left hung out to dry when the criticism comes. During my service year at the Louisiana Teacher of the Year (2009) I was "handled" and "managed" by those at the LDOE. My message became their message and I was steered away from weighing in on controversial topics and situations. No more! I refuse to be used, and will represent myself only, as a classroom teacher who is proud to have REMAINED in the classroom because I absolutely LOVE the teaching/learning process. So to anyone who might be afraid to speak out...you will know when the time is right. Just keep listening and watching for those times and places where YOU are the right person to make change happen!
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