Some people blog. Others have so much to say that it could fill a book. I guess I fall in the latter category.
Hi everyone. I just discovered this site as I was looking for teacher forums to participate in because as my subject line says, I do have some free copies of a book that I want to giveaway. But now I see this is a site where I want to stay and wish I knew about earlier.
The book I have written and being published soon is called, Welcome to My Nightmare, Classroom: A teacher in the trenches shatters, the myths, lies, and half-truths about public education. Now before you roll your eyes and think, "Who died and made her the "expert" on public education now qualifying her to write a book on the subject?", I want you to know, I don't really think I'm the expert at all. In fact, I was surprised how little I understood public schools until I accepted a teaching job at an "in need of improvement" high school located just a mile from the elementary school I had taught at for seven years. But after working at my high school for two years, I was compelled to write this book and share with the public that what they hear about public schools by the government and media and the reasons schools are "failing," isn't the reality. Yes, there are "bad" teachers and "bad" administrators, but there are many other major things contributing to why some schools aren't successful. This is just one of the reasons I decided to write this book: to get the message across it isn't just about teachers "need more training" or schools "needing more money."
Another reason was to further express my discontentment with No Child Left Behind. When I was an elementary school teacher, I hated No Child Left Behind and thought it was ruining our public schools with its obsession on thinking education is all about what a student's test score it. Once I moved up, I saw that No Child Left Behind is the least of our problems at schools like mine. Don't get me wrong, I still hate No Child Left Behind. But now the main reason why I hate it has changed. I hate it now because I see the huge disservice it is doing to children by giving their parents the impression successful schools ONLY happen depending on the efforts of the teachers and schools. It gives parents the idea that they don't play a part in determining how successful their child will be academically. But for all of us who work in education, we know how wrong this is. The truth is, teachers come and go, but parents are there through it all. So I have decided to start an organization called, "Education Begins At Home.org" dedicated to educating parents about how important their role is in the education process.
While you probably agree with that admirable goal, I know there might be many other things you don't agree with me on. I accept that after all, I did come up with 83 myths, lies, and half-truths. (I know there are probably a lot more than that!) I understand that this is just one teacher's reality, my realitly, and every teacher has their own. I just decided to share mine with others via this book, which will be available at Amazon.com very soon.
But for those of you who don't want to wait, don't want to pay, don't care if I'm really not an "expert", and don't care if there are errors in the book (just a few), I will send you a copy of my book, FREE! (including postage.) Just send me an email to Debracraig@hotmail.com with your address, and I will forward it onto you. I would also appreciate hearing if you agree or disagree with any of my thoughts. This offer is good only for the first 40 people who write since I only have 40 copies I was given by my publisher. These copies are part of an early run they did prior to the last proofreading to see what it looked like; they were given to me to do whatever I would like with them. I thought this would be an interesting way to distribute them.
(By seeing how much I wrote here, you now understand better why I wrote this book and just don't blog. I have a hard time being short and sweet.) The good news is, my book is only about 244 pages.
Nonetheless, who knows. Some day I actually might just try this thing called "writing a blog." Thanks for being patient with my "introduction" and good luck to all of you (like me) who will be starting a new school year very soon.
Most sincerely,
Debra Craig
aka OCIWarden
http://www.debracraig.com