Today, Apple is holding a major event. And at the risk of this post getting swallowed up in the PR flurry, may I please tell you about a different major apple event?
*climbs on soapbox*
There’s an old saying that begins, “It takes a village…” But what happens when the village gets taken?
People in our village, America, are forced to crowdsource funds to stave off healthcare-related bankruptcies which are happening more than half a million times each year. All while healthcare CEOs made $1.1 billion in compensation off of cutting benefits in 2018.
Neither is the education of our village’s children spared this phenomenon. A trending hashtag on Twitter is #ClearTheList, in which teachers are seeking the help of fellow villagers to help “clear the list” of important items which their classrooms are lacking and which they themselves are expected to provide with their own money. All while the unqualified billionaire Secretary of Education drains resources from public schools and makes them less safe.
We live in an incredibly baffling moment of America.
So it seems it will take this village, though taken itself, to raise its children.
I received a request for help in Clearing The List from a follower on Twitter who is a teacher in Florida. A deeper dive revealed that their school district is in a county where the majority of students qualify for free/reduced price lunch.
This is a school where students are currently attempting to use HP desktop PCs that were due to be replaced in the era when the computers were so bad the company was thinking about not even making them anymore (2011-ish?).
This is a school district that used to reimburse teachers $300 per year for supplies the teachers purchased themselves.
But this year the funding was cut in half.
Half, Eddie! </UmfufuVoice>
Can you imagine if we asked firefighters to please purchase their own hoses and maybe we would cut them a check that would perhaps cover a fraction of the cost? NO BECAUSE YOUR HOUSES WOULD BURN DOWN, HELLO.
But that, metaphorically, is what’s happening now. Your village is burning down.
Here’s how you can help stop the destruction of your village: #ClearTheList.
The list of Florida teacher @mickthegirl can be FOUND HERE. Dry erase boards, binders, a more diverse library. Dare I dream of Amazon Kindle Fires? These things and more can be obtained for a teacher who clearly has a passion for more than teaching, but also opening and broadening minds and instilling a similar passion for learning.
This was the other major apple event I wanted to tell you about. In the days of old, students would bring apples to their teachers. This is your chance to do the modern version of that.
