Dear Mrs. DeVos,
Congratulations on your confirmation as the Secretary of Education. It must feel amazing that your wealth let you step into such a prestigious role that helps to shape the minds of the future of this country--the kids.
As an educator, I am repulsed that you were the choice that was made. I spent five and a half years working my butt off to get my degree in Elementary Education because seeing the look on a child's face when they finally "get it" is the best feeling in the entire world. I racked up thousands of dollars in debt, paid to take certification tests, spent a year doing an unpaid internship, all the while attending normal classes, working, and attempting to have a social life. No, I didn't sleep, but guess what? I loved every single second of it.
I have spent the past two years attempting to find a teaching job and a classroom of my own. I love where I live, a place you love as well-Michigan. I don't want to have to leave here and I haven't been able to find a teaching job in the Grand Rapids area. I don't find myself to be very religious, so I can't bring myself to work in a religious school. Substitute teaching is not stable enough to be able to support my family, so I have found another job and put my teaching dreams on the backburner for now.
That was up until you were confirmed. That day I watched everything that I have worked so hard for, dreamed so long for, and hoped for go down the drain. See, the thing is, you don't value public education which is the backbone of the education system. You think that teachers are paid too much. You think that the only way a child can get a quality education is if they attend private, charter, or religious schools.
Guess what? You're WRONG. 90% of children are in the public school system. Those children count on their "overpaid" teachers to help shape and mold them to go on to choose to put themselves in debt to become doctors, nurses, teachers, CEOs, hairdressers, hell anything, really, because you can't do a damn thing without higher education these days.
Those "overpaid" teachers spend countless hours outside of the classroom planning, prepping, grading, and preparing for the next day just hoping that the lesson they have planned goes off without a hitch. They spend their own money on paper, tissues, and pencils because about halfway through the year, those items run out. They make connections with their students and the parents and they spend the first month of the school year reteaching because their students forgot everything over summer break. They go home at the end of the day exhausted, but so happy that they made even the slightest impact on someone that day.
Do you want to know what your confirmation means for me? It means that I will never see the inside of a classroom that I can call my own. It means that I will never again get to see the look on a child's face when they finally get it. See because by the time you are gone, my credentials will be expired and I will have no experience. No one wants to hire a teacher with no experience.
So thanks a million for your donation to the campaign fund so that you could be slated as the Secretary of Education. I am terrified for all that you are about to do to destroy everything we have worked so hard to achieve in education.
With a heavy heart,
A teacher that will never teach
