I Am a Teacher in Florida

Jamee Cagle Miller, an elementary school teacher in Seminole County, Florida, has started a viral brush fire with her powerful response to a Florida education bill (recently vetoed by Governor Crist) that would have linked teacher pay to student test scores. In "I Am a Teacher from Florida" Jamee writes:

I am a teacher in Florida.

I greet the smiling faces of my students and am reminded anew of their challenges, struggles, successes, failures, quirks, and needs. I review their 504s, their IEPs, their PMPs, their histories trying to reach them from every angle possible. They come in hungry—I feed them. They come in angry—I counsel them. They come in defeated—I encourage them. And this is all before the bell rings.

I am a teacher in Florida.

Read the full text here. Learn more about how the Florida billwould have affected  teaching and learning here.