stammer476
Refugee
My wife is an ESL (English as a Second Language) facilitator for Wayne County in Michigan (Detroit Metro area, basically). She works for two public elementary schools in Lincoln Park, MI. A few months ago, one of her schools had a severe fire in the gym and outer hallways, forcing the school to shut down and relocate their classes to a nearby Lutheran Church that had once been a private Lutheran school. That Lutheran school had shut down a few years ago due to lack of attendance, thus having open facilities, and everything worked out.
Since my wife is a facilitator for the county and not an "official teacher," she doesn't get her own classroom. In the former building, she had a small room that was always open when she needed it. In the Lutheran school, she shares a similar room with the speech therapist and special needs teacher. Obviously, with this many people trying to use this type of room, space is at a premium. For the past few weeks she's been forced to teach her students on the stage of the gym/cafeteria/auditorium. As you can imagine, that’s not the ideal teaching environment. Imagine holding class while students are ducking from dodge balls.
She’s made several complaints to the school about her situation, but has been repeatedly told that there simply isn’t any more room. A few days ago, she was talking with the special needs teacher about the situation, and this teacher told her that there are actually several rooms available, not being used at all. Further investigation proved this correct. But upon approaching the school officials about it, they told her the rooms could not be used for any school purposes. The reason? They have a cross on the wall. Not Bible quotes, not hymns, not Lutheran doctrine, just a cross. And because of this, she’ll have to continue teaching on the stage.
Now, in normal circumstances, this would be understandable. You obviously can’t have large religious icons placed on the walls of a public school building. The mess over taking down the Ten Commandments and such, I get it. Not appropriate. But at what point does this policy interfere with common sense? Students with special needs that require special attention, i.e. learning English as a second language, are already at a great deficit in their education. And now we must force them to learn in a poor environment simply because there’s a cross on the wall?
When does a policy become mute when it costs children the quality of their education? Their building almost burned down. Things are a mess. Can’t we make some concessions? This seems to be one of the scariest things when it comes to our search for “political correctness.” The zeal for “equality” can come at a cost no one would logically be willing to pay. Don’t get me wrong, many great and wonderful things have come from this awareness, but can’t we recognize when it’s gone too far?
Since my wife is a facilitator for the county and not an "official teacher," she doesn't get her own classroom. In the former building, she had a small room that was always open when she needed it. In the Lutheran school, she shares a similar room with the speech therapist and special needs teacher. Obviously, with this many people trying to use this type of room, space is at a premium. For the past few weeks she's been forced to teach her students on the stage of the gym/cafeteria/auditorium. As you can imagine, that’s not the ideal teaching environment. Imagine holding class while students are ducking from dodge balls.
She’s made several complaints to the school about her situation, but has been repeatedly told that there simply isn’t any more room. A few days ago, she was talking with the special needs teacher about the situation, and this teacher told her that there are actually several rooms available, not being used at all. Further investigation proved this correct. But upon approaching the school officials about it, they told her the rooms could not be used for any school purposes. The reason? They have a cross on the wall. Not Bible quotes, not hymns, not Lutheran doctrine, just a cross. And because of this, she’ll have to continue teaching on the stage.
Now, in normal circumstances, this would be understandable. You obviously can’t have large religious icons placed on the walls of a public school building. The mess over taking down the Ten Commandments and such, I get it. Not appropriate. But at what point does this policy interfere with common sense? Students with special needs that require special attention, i.e. learning English as a second language, are already at a great deficit in their education. And now we must force them to learn in a poor environment simply because there’s a cross on the wall?
When does a policy become mute when it costs children the quality of their education? Their building almost burned down. Things are a mess. Can’t we make some concessions? This seems to be one of the scariest things when it comes to our search for “political correctness.” The zeal for “equality” can come at a cost no one would logically be willing to pay. Don’t get me wrong, many great and wonderful things have come from this awareness, but can’t we recognize when it’s gone too far?
