“I am tired of trying to plan five different lessons a day that hit 61 different indicators on a rubric, and that’s just to score a rock-solid 3. I am tired of the public being convinced that Knox County is moving in the right direction when I see good teachers at my school in tears at some point during the day on a regular basis. I am tired of having to waste instruction time to give tests every week, whether I need to or not, just to have data,” Hopson says in the video. She’s calm, not impassioned, but the strength of her feeling—and her anger—comes through.
In that video, Hopson is standing in front of empty seats. But by the time the Nov. 6 board meeting rolled around, the room was full of hundreds of people wearing bright red to signify their support. Two dozen educators (and one student) told the board their concerns, over and over, often to raucous, deafening applause from the crowd.
“Why don’t we just manufacture robots instead of students,” one person said. “Even though I love to teach, I no longer love my job,” stated another. “In 28 years, I’ve never ever, ever seen morale as low as it is right now,” said a third. And the final speaker said, “There seems to be no foreseeable end of the assault on public teachers.”
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