Teacher's Resignation Letter About 'Harmful' School System Strikes a Chord
After 12 years as an educator, one teacher has grown so disillusioned with reforms in her public school system that she’s decided to call it quits. Her resignation letter, which outlines her concerns in detail, has gone viral.
Until last month, Wendy Bradshaw was the special education teacher at R. Bruce Wagner Elementary School in Lakeland, Florida. But after getting fed up with what she describes as “the misguided reforms taking place which are robbing my students of a developmentally appropriate education,” Bradshaw resigned from the Polk County School District. Although she posted her letter to the district on Facebook on Oct. 23, it has been picking up steam this week, getting shared more than 67,000 times, with more than 70,000 likes and more than 9,000 comments.
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“I love teaching. I love seeing my students’ eyes light up when they grasp a new concept and their bodies straighten with pride and satisfaction when they persevere and accomplish a personal goal,” Bradshaw writes. “I love watching them practice being good citizens by working with their peers to puzzle out problems, negotiate roles, and share their experiences and understandings of the world. I wanted nothing more than to serve the students of this county, my home, by teaching students and preparing new teachers to teach students well. To this end, I obtained my undergraduate, masters, and doctoral degrees in the field of education. … I spent countless hours in my classroom conferencing with families and other teachers, reviewing data I collected, and reflecting on my practice so that I could design and differentiate instruction that would best meet the needs of my students each year. I not only love teaching, I am excellent at it, even by the flawed metrics used up until this point. Every evaluation I received rated me as highly effective.”
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Yet state education reforms have made it impossible for Bradshaw to do her job, she writes. “Developmentally appropriate practice is the bedrock upon which early childhood education best practices are based, and has decades of empirical support behind it. However, the new reforms not only disregard this research, they are actively forcing teachers to engage in practices which are not only ineffective but actively harmful to child development and the learning process,” she writes. “However, I must be honest. This letter is also deeply personal. I just cannot justify making students cry anymore. They cry with frustration as they are asked to attempt tasks well out of their zone of proximal development. They cry as their hands shake trying to use an antiquated computer mouse on a ten year old desktop computer which they have little experience with, as the computer lab is always closed for testing. Their shoulders slump with defeat as they are put in front of poorly written tests that they cannot read, but must attempt. Their eyes fill with tears as they hunt for letters they have only recently learned so that they can type in responses with little hands which are too small to span the keyboard.”
At the letter’s conclusion, Bradshaw explains that she had a baby in June, and she can no longer be a part of a system that she would be terrified to send her daughter into. “I remember cradling her in the hospital bed on our first night together and thinking, ‘In five years you will be in kindergarten and will go to school with me.’ That thought should have brought me joy, but instead it brought dread,” she writes. “I will not subject my child to this disordered system, and I can no longer in good conscience be a part of it myself.”
Bradshaw said she posted her letter online because when she quit in person, she was given no opportunity to air her complaints. “[When I quit] there was no exit or impact survey or anything like that — they just closed the door,“ Bradshaw told ABC News. "I felt like no one at the school cared why I was leaving, but I had no idea so many people would react to my post and say that they felt the same way.”
Comments online have indeed been supportive, with many teachers and parents echoing Bradshaw’s frustrations. “It needs to stop. Teachers need to be able to use best practices and teach to the child instead of the test. Lawmakers need to get out of the classroom and let us do what we do best, teach,” wrote one user. Another said: “This is similar to the reasons I left a career of 30 years having experienced a lot of success. I not only was unable to stomach guiding teachers as a supervisor to implement detrimental literacy practices to 10,000+ students, I mostly couldn’t sleep at night knowing students were not receiving literacy education for a successful life.” One mother wrote that she, too, could feel Bradshaw’s frustration. “As a parent of a child with ADHD and a mild learning disability, I have said the system has failed our children. … My child has been pushed [through] elementary, middle and now high school with little to none of the proper one-on-one time she needs to learn the basic life skills. I am always told we have guidelines and goals to meet and if we don’t meet them we will lose our job, so therefore we don’t have the extra time needed to stop and explain every thing that she slacks in. Our school system needs a BIG CHANGE for the better of the kids.”
In an interview with The Ledger, Polk Superintendent of Schools Kathryn LeRoy acknowledged Bradshaw’s frustration, and voiced her concern over qualified teachers leaving. “My first reaction was: I understand her frustration and I generally agree. The problem is that the accountability system is smothering everybody,” LeRoy said. “We can’t afford to lose any more good educators. I don’t know what’s going to happen to our public education system if we can’t recruit or retain good teachers.”
In response to Bradshaw’s post, The Polk County Public Schools released a statement briefly addressing her concerns. “We understand [Bradshaw’s] frustration over trying to delicately balance mandates, other instructional priorities and most importantly, the needs of each child,” the statement says. “Teachers strive for an effective balance every day to positively impact their students. As the State of Florida moves forward on accountability, we hope the process is thoughtful, equitable and balanced. We appreciate the six years [Bradshaw] gave to our school district, and we wish her success in her future endeavors.”
Those endeavors include working as an adjunct professor, writing homeschool curricula, and advocating for change, Bradshaw told Today Parents. “Write your school board. Write your legislators. Tell them your stories, because legislators and elected members respond to a compelling story — it’s what gets them to listen. If they don’t hear about it, they just continue doing what they’re doing,” she said.
And what they’re doing, she says, is broken. “We may teach [kids] some things, but we also teach them to hate reading and to hate school because it becomes a chore and it doesn’t become about how much you love hearing about Junie B. Jones’ adventures,” she said. “It’s about how fast you can read 'The fat cat sat on a mat.’ There’s no joy in it.”
Bradshaw isn’t the only teacher who has quit over bureaucratic frustrations recently. Earlier this week, Ann Marie Corgill, an Alabama school teacher who was the 2014-2015 Teacher of the Year, resigned when she was told she was suddenly unqualified to teach fifth grade. Though Corgill had a National Board Certification to teach students between age 7 and 12 — which covers fifth grade — state requirements said she needed a different certificate. “After 21 years of teaching in grades 1-6, I have no answers as to why this is a problem now, so instead of paying more fees, taking more tests, and proving once again that I am qualified to teach, I am resigning,” she wrote in her headline-making resignation letter.
(Photo: Facebook)
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