Illinois teacher calls it quits

by David Safier

Fourth grade teacher Ellie Rubinstein decided to quit rather than take an involuntary transfer. She made a 10 minute video describing her reasons. What's interesting is that she left a career in advertising and public relations to become a teacher at age 45 "to do something meaningful with my life." She describes loving teaching but becoming increasingly discouraged by the regimen of standardization and testing.

You can tell from the video Rubinstein is one of those "difficult" teachers who fights for what she thinks is best for her students, which likely got her into squabbles with her administration. I can relate — I was often one of those "difficult" teachers — but I also remember when I got into those battles, the best administrators would listen to me, sometimes argue with me, sometimes bend to what I wanted and sometimes not, but they understood that this is a healthy part of professional-to-professional dialogue. These days, it's getting harder even for good adminstrators to be flexible when they're faced with inflexible demands from above.

You can watch the video below the fold.