Patrick Sweeney: Sad state for teachers

Thanks for allowing readers to more clearly understand the incredible frustration and administrative insult endured by North Carolina’s public school teachers.

There can be no clearer understanding, no firmer grasp, of a teacher’s virtually untenable situation than to read the March 13 Point of View “ ‘You don’t care about me any more’ ” by Blaine Maples, a teacher in Rockingham, followed by the March 15 news article “Wake teachers challenged over beliefs about students” by T. Keung Hui.

The two articles read together represent an alpha-to-omega litany of the frustration and the utter nonsense teachers face every day.

These professionals, entrusted with the education of our children, are systematically belittled, ignored, shortchanged and condescended to with almost relentless consistency.

The Maples piece is a factual lament, courageous in its honesty and downright remarkable in its restraint.

Hui’s piece, meanwhile, serves as a window into an administration’s mindset that can be described only as Orwellian. Since recent teacher survey responses were deemed unsatisfactory, administrators, Hui wrote, will survey teachers again “to see if their beliefs have changed over time.”

Truly – and sadly – amazing.

This story was originally published March 19, 2016 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Patrick Sweeney: Sad state for teachers."