Whenever I hear about unions my mind is automatically drawn back to why Unions became prevalent in the first place in this country and "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. Unions are a good thing to protect worker's rights and to ensure that work environments do not become abusive.
Tenure seems to be a way to give recognition to teachers who have paid their dues in the teaching career.
But, it seems that no matter what it is in life, too much of a good thing, or something placed with good intentions, can become something not so great.
I believe that reform is needed in both of these topics.
As I write this post I am back and forth on how much detail I want to go into since I am working in a public school now and as you can see working to make my way into the teaching field. To keep things short and sweet I have seen the benefits of the teaching union at work. There are good things the unions do and very good reasons for it to exist. Unions are good, within reason.
The issue that I have as an aspiring educator is how come if I am working so hard to learn and evolve with the ever changing times of education and to soak up as much knowledge as I can in many different subject areas and then, when I am hired have to worry about having a job at the end of each school year, and placating the desires of the principal, how come some teachers are allowed to become so comfortable that they are essentially allowed to stop learning for their kids benefit and can be comfortable being subpar just because they have a certain amount of years under their belt as a teacher?
Now, I am not saying this is the case for every teacher with tenure. I am merely basing this off of some cases that I have seen or heard about.
I think when given the chance to do such a crucial job of raising our kids, helping shape young minds, and preparing our youth for their future we should not be comfortable. We should always evolve and change with the times. With something so important as our kids we needs to keep striving to be better. Job security should be guaranteed for those who work hard but none of us should become so comfortable as teachers to not keep changing shape and working constantly to be better through learning from peers, or other avenues.
In conclusion, I believe that reform is needed for bother tenure, and unions. I do not believe that either should be completely done away with but I think both should be required to hold themselves to certain set of standards to be used.
I also think that reform is needed, but not eliminated completely. Tenure is a good thing, but just needs to be revised.
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