Hi! My name Is Leana and I go to Fresno State. I am currently doing some community service hours at Millview Elementary for my Comm 1 and Comm 101 class. I am working in the resource center and have noticed that help is needed. Just on the days that I am there I have noticed that there is a lot of work that needs to be done. If there is anyone that has some extra time to volunteer that would be great. ,=) Thank you for your time.

A few months back I read a letter in our local newspaper’s opinion column. It was by a teacher that wanted another bureaucrat to know that teaching was not a business.

I agree testing is not teaching.

So with a heavy heart I sat the paper aside. I myself had had always wanted to teach, and upon hard work, huge hurdles, and countless student loans that I cannot dream of paying back I became a teacher with a Masters degree and NCLB qualifications.

However, after becoming a teacher, I found through NCLB that teaching is no longer the vocation I took to heart.

Due to NCLB, my passion is now a business. One that is leaving many a child that enters this fill in the bubble world to becoming a generation at risk. With NCLB students have learned not to think for themselves, and teachers have learned how to teach test taking only.

Like Kimberly Meigs, Heather Mildon and Stephanee Jordan, I have seen sweeping changes in the education system that seems to only benefit the standardized test makers.

Gone is P.E., Music, Art, Social Studies, Science; the very thing so many of our students need in order to make it in the real world.

As a teacher, being told you can only teach Math and Language Arts, has insulted not only my intelligence, but thousands of other educators, parents, and students. Take for example one of my past school years.

A few years ago I had roughly 300 students in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, (give or take), that I saw for 3 1⁄2 hours a day. It was a position created to give teachers 1 hour of class prep time in a year roud school. So the time was designated for science. I taught science. I had everyone from special education to ESL and ELL students. It was truly a mixture that was a challenge not only in sheer volume of students and paperwork; but one of joy. The school had their first science fair. The positive response by parents, and the community, was overwhelming. The students were so proud of their hard work. When money was cut
at the end of the year, so was my job.

I was replaced by benchmarks and those that seem to know best. I still have students come up to me asking about why there is no science at their school any more, and why I left them. Others have thanked me. Some have said you were a tough teacher. And me? Well somewhere… there has to be a need for a highly qualified, middle-aged teacher that believes in students taking notes, challenging themselves to complete a project, discover and learn through hands-on experiences, that believes students should read a whole book, not just a chunk of a story, and showing all of their math work. Somewhere there has to be a place where students learn that they are more than a number generated from a test. If so…I’d really like to have a job.