Opinion

Opinion: School District Gives Science Teacher Less and Less Time to Teach Students

Published

7 years ago

January 22, 2019

Mason Brown

Recently I sat down to update my resume. See if you can guess my job:

Promoted and ran online fundraising campaign securing $2,500.00 for equipment from outside parties.
Designed and implemented behavior logging system using google sheets and sites, allowing users to submit and track site wide behavior data and identify trends in behaviors.
Presented portfolio of materials to a panel of stakeholders to secure renewal of grant funding.
Managed tech repair and support program ensuring 40 Chromebooks were kept charged, updated, and functional for daily use.
Assembled, maintained and repaired equipment and laboratory apparatus for usage 2 times a week.
Organized and managed chemical storage, including filing inventory and safety documentation.
Repaired and maintained a 50-year-old heating system.

After seeing this list of responsibilities, your first guess was probably not high school science teacher. You might notice some significant items are missing, like teaching, lesson planning, and grading for 200 students across six classes.

In the five years since I began teaching, my list of job responsibilities has grown to be quite diverse and impressive. However, it has also become less and less recognizable.

A teacher today can easily fill half a page of their resume with roles and responsibilities without even using the words “teach” or “student.” This is not to say that a teacher does not think of their students and effective teaching as their primary focus.

But, as school budgets shrink ever smaller, school support staff are often the first to go. This leaves many tasks that are essential to the functioning of a school to the only people who are left, the teachers.

I did not volunteer or apply to be a fundraising campaign manager, but the alternative option was no lab equipment for my high school physics course.

The time spent creating wish lists, posting on social media, following up with donors were hours that were not spent on creating engaging lessons, providing students with personal feedback, or reaching out to parents.

If we truly value education, we should be demanding that our leaders work for changes that make a teacher’s responsibility teaching their students.

I would clear out all of the bullet points above if tomorrow it meant that I could replace them with:

Plans and executes engaging and personalized lessons to a diverse student body in a warm and welcoming classroom with 100 percent of students achieving passing grades.

My resume might end up looking a little empty, but I could always double space.

Mason Brown

Posts by Mason Brown

Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

Published

15 hours ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.