As students of the 21st century, the educational system sets us up for failure by guaranteeing teachers that they won’t be fired from their jobs. According to Press Telegram, only 1 out of 1,000 teachers are fired for performance related reasons because tenure assures them of their job.

Tenure may be great for teachers, but not for students. Especially when the teacher is ineffective at doing his/her job. It’s a waste of our time, affects our testing scores and wastes the school’s money. It frustrates me when they get paid to be lazy, while we have to go through their tortuous and long “lessons.” We spend almost our entire life in school, so we deserve the best: teachers, classrooms, equipment and lessons..

I find it ridiculous how some teachers do not teach what is needed but give you the work and expect you to finish it on your own. Students need to be engaged to learn, not “book work.” Assigning a packet and a due date doesn’t help anyone learn. Advanced or not, all students learn differently. I think some teachers should do their jobs better, instead of sitting around doing nothing. My appreciation goes out to the teachers that love their jobs. Those who strive to help the students understand the material. The ones that already have lesson plans made for the whole month. The ones that stay after-school or during lunch to help students with understanding and completing their work. The ones that teach the lesson multiple times to make sure that everyone gets it. Those are the teachers worth keeping. They deserve to be called teachers.

It also bothers me most, when ‘teachers’ give random A’s to students in their class because they didn’t teach anything or assign work. Handing a free grade is just insulting. One, it’s not fair to the hardworking students who do their homework on time and study the day before a huge test. That’s also bad teaching because they’re basically telling their students that life will hand you whatever you want and that you don’t need to work for it. Two, it isn’t fair for the teachers that hold students accountable for their grades. As those teachers give grades to their students who have worked hard for, the lazy teachers are casually entering random grades.

I know firing a teacher is a long and difficult process, but why keep a teacher that doesn’t even do his or her job at all? Throughout my life, I’ve seen many dedicated and compassionate teachers lose their jobs. So why not give the frivolous teachers a pink slip instead of giving them to the diligent ones? I may sound harsh, but if you don’t love your job you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.