First off: a few disclaimers. My wife is a teacher. I am a former teacher. No, I did not retire. I chose to leave the profession that I deeply loved. I chose to walk away from a permanent position that I held for nine years.   You see, the writing was on the wall for me when I stepped away in 2014, and while I miss my interactions with my students, I do not miss the destruction that this government (and previous governments) has done to our school system. I knew at that time, that I would have to sell my soul and all of my core beliefs if I were to remain in the education profession. Instead, I chose to exit.

I am one of those parents that is completely fed up with the drivel that Stephen McNeil and Karen Casey have been spewing. You see, they have absolutely NO clue what today’s teachers are facing. And let’s get one thing straight folks, what the teachers are facing, is exactly the same thing that your children are facing on a daily basis. We are living with a system that is completely broken. Teachers are attempting to cope with more and more crap-policies that are being downloaded onto their backs by the Department of Education.  While McNeil and Casey will have you believe that it’s all about teacher wages and benefits, that is not what has truly awoken the giant. What you are seeing are thousands of passionate individuals who are exhausted. They are tired of having to implement bone-headed policies that are passed down from people in glass towers who have not been in a classroom in decades. They are tired of being slaves to data input/management. They are tired of feeling like they aren’t accomplishing what they want to accomplish in their classrooms, due to idiotic decision-makers in Halifax who are living in la-la land, some (or many?) of whom have children that attend private schools in the city.

So here is what I’d like to do.   I’d like to offer McNeil and his crew something totally free. They do not need to pay me to write a fancy report. They don’t need to hire their buddy to start up another task force to blow more of our tax dollars. All they need to do is read a little further, and get a picture of what life is truly like for today’s educators AND students. Oh, and please forgive me if anything said here offends you. It is my opinion only, and it is certainly not politically correct. It is real.

 Let’s start where it all begins…elementary school.