Have I been gaslit into becoming a robot?
I’ve been teaching in a large district my whole career except that 1 “teacher residency” year in a completely different district.
I chose my district with intention. That’s a big part of the culture here. Like choosing my district is tied to the core of who I am. Thats how “political” the issue is here for those who are engaged. This is an important detail.
So I agreed and dove in. Worked for a diabolical principal. Ate up the “in the name of equity” entree and “for the kids + social justice” side course.
Being told all along that I needed prove myself every step of the way by submitting my planned lesson down to each word I’d say and gaining approval by people more knowledgeable by me…
Now the autonomy of choosing my own words and strategies to teach the universal curriculum has decreased to the autonomy of choosing the color of my PowerPoint slide.
I no longer have to write my own script for every lesson word for word. Now I have to read someone else’s script.
I went to school and studied hard to learn how to best share my knowledge with my students in service of reducing the stains of racism and inequity. But now I’ve gone from the author of my own course, to child actor with an oppressive stage mom pocketing my earnings and Claude/AI is the script writer.
Is this happening everywhere? Are we all slowly losing our autonomy in our classrooms? Or do I just work in a district that’s extremely toxic?
I don’t know. It’s hard to tell when the elites have always chosen to strip the autonomy of others rather than slow their own profiteering.