Teacher’s Resignation Letter Shocks The Academic Community

A teacher’s resignation letter shocked members of the school board after the reasons the 25-year educator opted to leave the classroom were read aloud during a meeting.

Susan Sluyter said that America has entered a “disturbing era” in public education. The change in tone and focus of the United States public school system was so vast, in Sluyter’s opinion, she could no longer tolerate being involved in the process and penned her now-viral resignation letter last month.

Excerpt from Susan Sluyter’s resignation letter:

“In this disturbing era of testing and data collection in the public schools, I have seen my career transformed into a job that no longer fits my understanding of how children learn and what a teacher ought to do in the classroom to build a healthy, safe, developmentally appropriate environment for learning for each of our children.”

The veteran educator taught at the Cambridge Public School District in Massachusetts, in both kindergarten and pre-K classrooms. According to Sluyter, she has witnessed the job requirements for teachers shift away from a focus on the students, their emotional needs, individual learning styles, interests, and their families to an emphasis on testing, scoring, and assessing the children. The public school teacher also stated that teachers have been forced to attend workshops and classes regarding new academic content requirements which in her view, are more appropriate for first and second grade pupils.

Susan Sluyter also noted in her resignation letter that she was spending a lot more time scheduling meetings to address the “extreme behaviors” of her students which she feels stemmed from the children not being capable of fully comprehending the content presented in the time frame allotted.

“I recognize many of these behaviors as children shouting out to the adults in their world, ‘I can’t do this! Look at me! Know me! Help me! See me,” the resignation letter added.

The Massachusetts teacher also feels that as the years roll by she had less and less time to teach children in the way she “knows best” and is recommended by child development experts.

“I reached the place last year where I began to feel I was part of a broken systems that was causing damage to those very children I was there to serve,” Sluyter wrote.

The teacher feels that cutting play out of the kindergarten and pre-K academic plan is not in the best interests of the children and sadly stated that she was resigning with a broken heart. Her sentiments appear to be shared by a host of homeschooling and charter school parents who are removing their children from the public school system in record numbers.

What do you think about the state of the public education system and the soaring enrollment in charter and homeschool programs?

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