Protecting the instructional time of our future leaders

As a teacher of the CNMI Public School System it has become more and more challenging to educate our students in an ever changing world of education. We have had to struggle to obtain degrees, CNMI certification, and now Praxis certification. Despite all these personal professional requirements, I have found the continuing struggle to educate my students and to keep my job of educating my students a priority harder and harder to fulfill.

Why has teaching become more difficult? Most of the requests from the community, and all government and private agencies to donate food, money, toys, and time are solicited from students who attend public schools. We teachers are continuously asked to support causes and campaigns by having our students participate in activities that are overwhelmingly interfering with their studies. Over the recent years we have continuously asked our students to donate everything, from money to canned food. These things are in most cases necessities of our students themselves, and yet we are expected to ask them to donate at least five times throughout the school year?! Has anyone looked at our free lunch participants list lately?

My greatest concern this school year, in which I hope I can get everyone’s favor and assistance in, is to try and get our parents involved in their child’s education. The help that our parents can give us with planning, chaperoning, and participating in extracurricular activities has been a challenge to obtain. The reason I bring parent involvement into the picture is, I would like to implore all government and private agencies who try to get their jobs done and promote their community activities through the Public School System to stop bothering our children! Our students are having enough trouble trying to improve in Reading and Math in order to become successful and earn higher test scores. They are our future leaders! Let them study without these interruptions! However, I think it would be a good idea if we go directly to the parents who teachers and administrators have had to struggle with in the same regards, and ask them to donate toys, ask them to donate canned food, ask them to walk in the walk-a-thons. Then maybe, parents will volunteer, and in turn, will bring their whole family, and we will have parents and their children involved in community events instead of teachers and their students participating in these events. These events really should be dedicated to promoting quality family time.

Please adhere to this plea. Allow us to do our jobs of educating our island’s future leaders. Contact parents instead, and educate parents in what it is you are trying to promote on our island, for it is through them that our students should learn first. Healthy habits, diabetes awareness, food for the needy, and money for social services are all good things to be knowledgeable of and can be taught to kids through our assigned standards and benchmarks. In school, our students need to learn their Math, their Reading, and the standards and benchmarks in Science, Health and Social Studies. Hence, talk to our parents about the food drive and the walk-a-thon and the pledges and fundraisings for your organizations so they will better understand. I am sure they will be willing to help in any way possible.