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Dear politician:
I am a common Joe, not Common Joe the plumber, but common Joe the teacher. You claim to represent me, but you don't even know who I am.
Allow me to make a few comments here. First, I do not appreciat the continued attacks on teacher tenure and if you support such a plan I will not support you. I have been teaching 28 years, and I could give you the names of hundreds of people who have had me in class who could testify that I am a good teacher. First, I have chosen to teach in a smaller school that is constantly struggling with money. If I were teaching in a city school -- many of whom are failing -- I could make probably 50% more than I am making at the school where I teach. Tenure is one of the few perks I have. Have you considered the fact that no matter how good a teacher I am, my school could fire me if I did not have my tenure and hire someone for roughly half of what I am making? Tenure protects teachers from this kind of threat. I won't even get into the threats that I feel against my pension, which I pay 12 or so percent of my salary into monthly. Also, I think I can safely say that the percentage of incompetent teachers is much less than the percentage of incompetent politicians.
I would like to see one of you Congressman live your lifestyles on 50,000 dollars a year. You have no idea what the common Joe, middle class person goes through. I have a daughter in college. Get this: because I work, I make too much money for my daughter to get Federal grants. I work three jobs to help her get through college. My wife works two. My daughter made made an amazing score on her ACT test and wants to go into teaching because she wants to teach -- certainly not for all the financial rewards. There was a time I would have told her that teaching is an honorable, respected profession. Now, I tell her that she better get used to having a target on her back because some damn politician is always trying to gun down teachers. By the way, I'm guessing you, Mr. Politician, don't worked three jobs at one time. Half the time you don't even work the job you have. If I produced the results in my job that Congress does in its job, I would have been fired years ago.
There is another gripe I have against you, Mr. Politician, and that is the cloud of smoke you blow at people to get them riled up. While I have my own feelings about abortion, same-sex marriages, and other controversial topics, I want to know what you are going to do to fix the economy. I want to know if my grandchildren are going to be fighting in some foreign country. I want to know if my father who served in the military and then worked for over 50 years is still going to get his social security check. Getting the vote by riling people up emotionally is a way of avoiding major issues that will determine the future survival of this country.
So, Mr. Politician, what are you going to do?
Sincerely,
common Joe the teacher
You are so very right. The government concerns itself with way to meny things that really should be a private person's concern, not the government's. I don't care if gay people want their marriages to be declared legal, though I suppose it has an affect on their tax rate. And abortion - that is something SO personal, it shouldn't even reach congress other than to ensure these women don't go to some back alley butcher. What really burns me is every time someone wants to raise taxes, it's the schools who will suffer if they don't get their way. I mean really, if they think the schools are teaching such fluff that it can be discarded, it makes me wonder what they believe is being taught that it can afford to be done without. Ok, so I've heard a few horror stories along that line, but those thing usually fell under government required curriculum.
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