Teacher’s resignation letter: ‘My profession … no longer exists’

I know we've been trying to keep the discussion postitive, but I found Gerald J. Conti's letter of resignation to be particularly moving.

Conti writes about a number of things that we have touched on in class conversations:

• systematic mistrust of teachers
• generic assessments as a detriment to creativity and critical thinking
• lack of leadership
• privatization of school programming

He writes, "STEM rules the day and “data driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education and particularly not at Westhill."