Stand Up!

Connect The Dots of Leadership

        It is time to connect the dots so that everyone can clearly see how our Governor’s negative attitude toward teachers has actually fostered a culture beneath him where administrators within the Department of Education (aka Board of Education) knowingly and incessantly engage in the abridgment of the basic constitutional rights of teachers, students, and parents.

        It is time to connect the dots so that everyone can clearly see how our Governor’s negative perception of teachers has produced an administrative culture where it is permissible to ceaselessly intimidate, bully, and harass teachers; where they are blasé about disrupting lessons and depriving students from a sound education; where they are not interested in facilitating a safe and nurturing learning environment and community building but a hostile and authoritative institution which closely resembles correctional facilities; where they engage in many other immoral and unethical practices with complete immunity against any form of accountability.

        It is time to connect the dots so that everyone can clearly see that these antiquated  “Get-Tough/Scared Straight” tactics, as indicated by many controlled scientific studies, are destructive to the learning environment, toxic to the developing mind, facilitates anger and alienation in children, and teaches children to resent authority.

         Is this what we want for our children around a time that more prisons are actually being built in comparison to schools? Is this what we want for our children around a time that the amount of juvenile court cases has reached the millions? Is this what we want for our children around a time that we are openly experiencing hardship between communities and law enforcement?

   

       You cannot teach children better social skills by being aggressive toward them, their teachers, and their parents. So Governor Cuomo, I implore you to connect your dots of leadership because the adversity Public Schools are currently experiencing is exactly what you will clearly see. Much love to you all, always.

Sincerely,

Luis Angel Perez

Middle School Science & Mathematics,

First Grade, Fourth Grade Educator & Advocate

http://writing4light.blogspot.com/

writing4light@yahoo.com

Must Read

Dear Susan Cain,

Dear Susan Cain,

        Your insight and advocacy for the people that are naturally quiet and very reflective provides an essential cleansing to our human culture; a much needed cleansing from the many misconceptions, negative-social stigmas, discrimination, and oppression which even very intelligent professionals, for so long, have inadvertently imposed upon the beautiful quiet cerebral souls.

        Your insight and advocacy are immensely empowering, medicinal to the self-esteem, and breathtakingly liberating, especially for a people whom have been continuously hammered into believing that their way is a form of pathology.

        Thank you immensely for modeling the embrace of your silence, reaching into the depths of your brilliant core, and mustering the currents necessary to create this monumental paradigm shift.   

Sincerely,

Luis Angel Perez, Science & Mathematics Educator 

Susan Cain: The power of introverts

Is There a Prescription for Advocacy?

        So I announce, solely to administrators, teachers, and staff (not parents or students) that I will be going on a hunger strike starting the first day of mid-winter recess, in order to bring awareness to the rampant abuse of power which no one seems to want to address.

        Notice how this results in a medical referral by the Principal to the Department of Education’s Human Resource Medical Office. In order to give weight to her reasoning for a medical referral the Principal also references my letters of advocacy, calling them “inappropriate” and “with strange titles”.

 

        Below I include Administration’s reasoning for the medical referral and my letters of advocacy titled, The Elephants In Our Rooms, and Speaking Without Words. All the other titles the Principal cited in her referral, (A Great Feeder, The Attention Span of a Squirrel, and Baseline of Disregard), are already posted here with their respected content.

        For this I was pulled out of class and the students were given a memo to give to their parents which says that my writing “has raised some concerns as to the safety of the school".

You be the judge.

I wish you all a healthy, loving, reflective, 
and abundant New Year for 2015.

Sincerely,

Luis Angel Perez

Seeking a Prescription for Advocacy