Amanda Coffman taught for 21 years until recently, when she decided she just couldn’t do it anymore.
Why? According to Coffman,
“Teaching is like a bad marriage.
You never get your needs met, but you stay in it for the kids.”
So, on February 10 of this year, the veteran teacher resigned during a school board meeting that was livestreamed.
Coffman, a teacher in the Shawnee Mission School District in Kansas, said that her and her fellow teachers had been working without a contract since last June.
Photo Credit: YouTube
The teachers had until February 14, 2020, to accept the school board’s new unilateral contract, reject it and work under the terms of the previous contract, or to resign.
Coffman chose to resign from her position.
Education cuts were made in Kansas several years ago that forced teachers to take on an even larger workload.
Coffman said,
“Teachers felt strongly that the district was attempting to silence them by issuing the three-year contract.
Effectively, they would not have to negotiate with teachers over anything until the Spring of 2022.
I have felt increasingly like my voice is not valued in the district over the last few years, and this public campaign to silence us all was the last straw for me.”
She added,
“This isn’t the kind of decision you make impulsively.
I had been pretty open with my friends and colleagues that if this was the way that the contract went, I was probably going to resign.
I’m not sure how many believed that I really would, though!
I called my parents the day before and sent them the link to watch the livestream.”
Photo Credit: YouTube
Coffman said the decision was very difficult and that she cried when she packed up her classroom for the last time.
If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that teachers deserve to be paid WAY more than they currently make.
Watch Coffman’s address to the school board in the video below.
After her resignation, Coffman said she “received a very nice email with personal messages from around 20 former students, organized by a former student. They seem to understand that I did not want to leave them, but rather that I am living the hard lessons I try to teach.”
The video has been viewed over one million times and for good reason.
What do you think about the things that Coffman had to say?
We’d especially like to hear from the teachers out there to get your opinions.
Please talk to us in the comments!
