Ooh, here's a comment that cuts both ways:
If we give you advice, don't fight it. Take it, and digest it in the same way you would consider advice from a doctor or lawyer.
...duly weighted in consideration of qualifications to offer advice in a particular area, and to be refuted with refereed literature/professional assessments in hand. Check.
And if we're playing Spot the Contradiction, I submit these:
I feel so sorry for administrators and teachers these days whose hands are completely tied. In many ways, we live in fear of what will happen next. We walk on eggshells in a watered-down education system where teachers lack the courage to be honest and speak their minds.
If I were a teacher, I would be livid if this guy purported to represent my cause. To paraphrase him: "We wish we had the courage to be effective." Yikes.
We just ask -- and beg of you -- to trust us, support us and work with the system, not against it.
I'll just switch my brain to blind faith mode. This is the Borg. Resistance is fu-tile.
As an aside, I often wonder if choice to work at a private school is an indicator of vocation in teaching. In our province, fully loaded average teacher pay and benefits are >$100k. Somehow, my little private high school managed to attract a team of remarkable teachers without matching provincial pay scales. These teachers almost universally supported extra-curricular activities, took a personal interest in each student, and were strong role models for myself and my classmates. Having spoken with them after I graduated, many said their choice of where to work was guided by the smaller class sizes and more pleasant working atmosphere of a university-bound crowd.
