Because I'm on a pro-teacher kick

Or, maybe, I'm just very pro-teacher. Timothy Egan, in the New York Times, recently presented a "back to school" blog post. This, another, in the spirit of Brill's New Yorker article, is filled with the usual loose language that belittles teachers and teaching. I guess it's a little better because Egan was at least trying to be funny.

Far more interesting are the comments. Check this out:

I’m writing this at 5:45 am as I ready myself to go to school where I teach high school English. I accepted a $3000 pay cut: I have a masters plus an additional 21 credits of post graduate study, I’m 46 and a single mom, I work about 55 hours a week and I earn $50K. What does Timothy Egan earn? Does his career as a reporter have oddities and weird examples - corruption, entitlement - if I comb the entire country for ‘proof’? I’m sure it does. But why would I do that? Why? Unless I was filled with bile and contempt for a career, and was blessed with a platform, and above all, wanted to help destroy journalism.

In this time, when teaching is at a crucial juncture, it is extraordinarily irresponsible for Mr Egan to twist a handful of incidences into an article about ‘bad’ teaching. THere are SO many good teachers out there. So many of us give hours and hours to try to help our children learn, and yet here is the contempt and misinformation yet again. It’s very dispiriting and it’s no wonder that so many people leave the teaching profession.

— Diana