After 27 years of teaching, Tracey Suits couldn’t take it anymore.

“It’s just gotten to be much more difficult than it was when I began teaching,” Suits said.

Suits announced her resignation at a Pasco County School Board meeting last month. Her speech – which you can read in full at the bottom of this article – highlights the reasons she couldn’t continue.

Among those reasons: standardized testing. Suits said the pressure to teach to the test was overwhelming.

“It seems like now when we have to cover standards for the standardized test, they have to be covered in this amount of time and they have to be covered this way,” she said. “It wasn’t so much of a fun job anymore.”

Suits said she felt micromanaged.

“It used to be that we were trusted, that the teacher could be trusted to carry out the lesson plans based on the state standards,” she said. “Now it’s like we have someone always looking over our shoulder.”
 
Suits is not alone in her frustration. Lori Lovetere was there when Suits gave her speech to the School Board. Lovetere is a Pasco County teacher, and she said she was “cheering her on.”
 
“A lot of what she said is really true, and it’s a lot of the frustrations teachers have,” Lovetere said. “The mandates for all the testing, and the data, being scrutinized so much to make sure students are going to be ready for this test that essentially has no value for the students.”
 
Like Suits, Lovetere said she feels like her hands are tied.
 
“You don’t even feel like you can teach anymore,” she said. “What we’re doing is we’re creating students who are memorizing information and spitting it out, and they’re not becoming critical thinkers and they’re not becoming creative thinkers.”
 
Lovetere is still teaching, but she’s not sure for how long.
 
“I don’t know how many years I have left in me,” she said.  “I feel like an accomplice to a crime,” she said.
 
The crime?
 
“(Of) depriving them of an education that’s going to allow them to be creative and critical thinkers.”

Jim Ciadella, Director of United School Employees of Pasco, said their concerns are not new – nor are they special to Pasco County.
 
“It’s not a brand new phenomenon,” Ciadella said. “We feel very fearful about what that means for the future here, in terms of our education for our students here in Pasco County and throughout Florida.”
 
The issues Suits highlighted in her speech won’t be fixed in a day. Ciadella said his organization works with the school district and state leaders to make change, but it’s not easy.
 
“We’re working both at the state level and the district level to find some relief for our teachers, our SRP (school-related personnel) and ultimately our students,” he said.
 
Suits hopes her outspokenness inspires other teachers.
 
“Keep fighting,” she said. “Make your voice heard.”

Tracey Suits read this speech to the school board on Jan. 19, 2016. This letter has not been edited.
 
Oftentimes people in social situations ask me about my job. When I answer that I am a teacher, I frequently get a response of: “How do you do it?” or “I could never do that.” Well, the time has come when I have to ask myself “How DO I do it?” The answer is, I cannot.

I cannot continue to teach students to regurgitate information for secretive, high-stakes, standardized tests when it goes against everything I morally stand for. I want my students to be original, innovative thinkers, not a test score. Too much testing leaves no space for autonomy in teaching and creativity in the classroom. Teaching has become education by legislation.

I cannot continue to work afternoons, evenings, and weekends grading papers, typing formal lesson plans, uploading documentation for evaluations, and researching teaching methods to meet the needs of all my students. I am a parent and wife first.

I cannot continue to give up my planning period (when I should be grading and planning) but instead, am spending at duty, parent conferences, in PLC meetings, school staffing meetings, or IEP meetings.

I cannot continue to be cursed at by students, berated by parents, and bullied by politicians. Low morale transfers to the students, and they deserve better.

I cannot work where the library has become a testing center and librarians are undervalued to the point of non-existence.

I cannot ignore anxiety attacks, autoimmune disorders and other health problems that have cropped up these past few years due to the excessive stress.

There is a teacher shortage in our district. It’s not just because of low salaries. Retaining teachers has always been more than that.

Twenty-seven years ago, I started teaching. But now, most of my day is not spent on instruction. I am certainly not the only teacher who feels this way, however, I cannot do it any longer. I am resigning.

Those who can teach, I admire and respect you. Someone once said, “A good teacher is like a candle, it consumes itself to light the way for others.” Don’t blow our candles out.

Suits' official resignation letter, submitted two weeks before the board meeting, is below:

CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this story implied that the speech Suits delivered at the school board meeting was the text of her resignation letter. The story has been updated to include her official resignation letter, submitted to the school board two weeks before.