School is already back in full swing in many parts of the country, including some districts in Georgia.
One county got the year off on a bit of a rough foot, however. It all started with the Cobb County School District’s back-to-school kickoff, featuring a keynote speech from Superintendent Chris Ragsdale.
Superintendent gives polarizing speech, teachers walk out
The “Gearing Up for the School Year” speech started off tame enough. Teachers from across the county were in attendance as their superintendent discussed the things you’d expect: student safety, student success, and getting teachers excited for the year ahead.
But it dipped into some controversial territory when Ragsdale began proudly discussing a recent visit from President Trump to one of the high schools in the district. The visit, intended to discuss Trump Accounts investments for children, turned into a political rally, angering many in the community.
Ragsdale then began discussing the polarizing topic of book bans in the county’s schools, drawing connections between sexually explicit content in library books and the trafficking of children.
“We’ve gotten a lot of inappropriate materials out. .. The bottom line of what that comes down to is the protection of kids,” he said. “Everybody in education should be [pissed off] that they’re trying to use you as educators to condition kids of something as tragic as trafficking.”
Not all in attendance were thrilled about the content of the speech. WSB-TV in Atlanta reported that more than 100 teachers walked out of the hourlong address.
Here’s the full speech:
Teachers are questioned about the walkout and fire back with humor
A few days after the kickoff event, local news reported that teachers who’d walked out of the speech were being pulled out of class and questioned by their own administrators.
“Teachers all across the county being called into meetings with their principal and assistant superintendent and asked two questions: Why did you walk out of the superintendent’s speech and who gave you permission? They are being interviewed and possibly are facing consequences for standing up for themselves, and we will stand up for them,” Jeff Hubbard, president of the Cobb County Association of Educators, told WSB-TV.
That’s when the jokes started pouring in on social media from teachers in the county and beyond.
The jokes basically wrote themselves
Educators started throwing their own training language and district feedback right back at the county school board. Here are a few of the best comments:
“Dude, was this contingency shown in your lesson plan for that day?”
“He probably didn’t put his ‘I can do’ statements where they could have been seen easily.”
“But did he try to build a relationship? Was the success criteria posted?”
“But did he differentiate his instruction?”
“But did his speech differentiate for every member of his room?”
“Did he have his learning goals with the state standard written on the board?”
“Can’t discipline the kids, but gotta discipline the teachers”
“Where are his learning objectives? Shouldn’t they be visible?”
“Clearly his strategic agenda board wasn’t visible.”
“Did he try calling home first?”
“What kind of relationship building did you try? Why don’t they trust you? Try better classroom management tools? Maybe a reward system? If you know”
“Well I mean Hattie’s says that lectures are a -0.41 for effect size, he definitely should have broken it up into 5 minute chunks and asked questions in-between.”
(John Hattie’s research is frequently cited by administrators when evaluating teaching methods. According to that research, passive lectures are among the least effective ways to engage an audience, making the Cobb County kickoff speech particularly ironic.)
“Were his objectives, and the Standards they address, clearly written on the whiteboard and easily observable everyone? Did he greet his fledglings warmly and [individually]? Did he exude a welcoming presence? Did he take roll within the first ten minutes? Did he give individual attention, especially to the employees with individual needs? That’s what I want to know.”
Sharp reality behind witty one-liners
The educators’ frustration with the story is blindingly obvious, even behind the sarcasm and wit.
Teachers are being asked to uphold standards of professionalism and ethics in the classroom that their own leaders do not. They’re asked to keep politics, religion, and personal views out of schools while their own leaders openly wade into partisan issues. They are tasked with meeting impossible standards, teaching ever-changing curricula, buying supplies out of their own pockets, and doing it all for low pay.
Wherever you land on the president or book bans, most people can agree that teachers didn’t get into education to navigate politics and toe the party line. They took the job to make a positive impact on kids, and the most frustrating part of it all is that the decision-makers clearly had a different priority, at least this week.
Making these blisteringly accurate jokes is the release valve that helps them continue to show up day after day.
