To my fellow public school teachers,

As you are aware, there is a vacancy for Secretary of Education in President Trump’s cabinet that should not be filled by his current leading applicant, who is grossly unqualified to serve.  I know you are busy educating today’s youth for tomorrow’s future, but I invite you all to email or mail your application for the position to the President by emailing president@whitehouse.gov, visiting the Contact Us page at https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact#page, sending the President a message of inquiry via Twitter @realDonaldTrump or @POTUS, or via Facebook @POTUS.   We should #floodhisinbox with more qualified applicants.  I have posted my #secretaryofeducationcoverletter below.  I will be sending my letter and resume to President Trump today as well for my #secretaryofeducationapplication.  Perhaps we can persuade the President to choose someone more qualified to fill this seat.

Let our voices be heard,

D’Lee

 

 

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President Donald J. Trump

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, D.C. 20500

 

Dear President Trump,

 

I am writing you today to enclose a copy of my resume and reference letters for one of your open positions at the White House.  I understand that you are extremely busy running the country, but I would like for you to consider my application for Secretary of Education alongside your current applicant, Mrs. Betsy DeVos.  While I may only be a thirty-four-year-old poor public school teacher with mounds of student debt, I am a “highly qualified” teacher with a Master’s of Arts in Teaching from an accredited public university — the best university I could afford on my budget.  I have also been teaching in our public school system for eleven years, and I have earned several awards in teaching that demonstrate that the communities I have served and the one I currently serve are generally satisfied with my job performance as a teacher of diverse groups of public school children.  

 

Speaking of diversity, you will notice on my teaching certificate that I am certified to teach special needs students, general education students, and gifted students.  I will also be happy to submit my records from standardized testing, my curriculum vitae, my teaching philosophy, and my lesson plans for differentiation and inclusion, which will allow you to see that I have a strong history of using research-based methodologies in my pedagogical practices in order to push my students toward successful testing benchmarks, despite their low socio-economic status.  I will also be happy to provide hundreds of letters of support from my former students who will speak to my ability to foster a strong rapport and motivate children.  These students, now adults, are doctors, engineers, nurses, artists, electricians, tattoo artists, business owners, soldiers, policemen, teachers, and successful adults because I played a very small role in their overall education.  In addition, several of my colleagues and administrators will be contacting you to supply you with a plethora of professional references on my account.

 

My job duties have included the following:  making on average one thousand five hundred decisions a day regarding teaching and learning; writing curriculum based on learner needs and federal laws; complying with thousands of local, state, and federal mandates while managing a classroom full of about thirty unique students with specific learning and physical needs; delivering high quality lessons infused with technology and cross-curricular learning targets; differentiating my instruction while standardizing my tests; progress monitoring for at least one hundred students at a time; leading professional development communities at my school and external workshops in my area; encouraging other tired teachers to continue in this profession; hosting student teachers in need of practical experience; advocating for my students while maintaining professionalism; conferencing and speaking cordially to parents and school community members; mentoring individual students towards graduation goals; budgeting my department’s accounts and fundraising for other needed supplies, resources, and experiences for my students; writing grants for special programs within my school; attending multiple school functions during my personal time; and successfully completing “other duties as assigned.”  

 

As you can see, I spend most of my time teaching, but I do know something about the position of Secretary of Education.  Of the ten previous Secretaries of Education in our nation’s history, only four of them have been an actual educator of some kind; of these four, none of them have been an academic classroom teacher for a substantive length of time.  If your goal is to “drain the swamp” and choose someone more qualified, then you should consider a veteran academic classroom teacher or professor.  This person would not only be more qualified than previous secretaries, but also vastly more qualified than your current Secretary of Education nominee.  Someone like me can help you solve the problems associated with our national public education crisis, while providing you with real world classroom insights.  Together, we can abolish Common Core, amend the new ESSA law, keep states accountable to the IDEA law for special education students, create a meaningful national discourse about school choice, support public charter schools, minimize the power of the Federal Department of Education, provide states and districts with proper funding, lower the cost of college, and deregulate educational policies to be more inclusive of teachers, students, and parents.  In essence, we can change the status quo in education in a way that will actually benefit our children’s futures.  

 

It seems to me and to many of my colleagues that you did not have enough experts apply for the job, although almost any one of the millions of public school teachers and university professors would be a much better consideration for this cabinet position than your current leading applicant.  Out of concern for our children and deference to you, I would like to formally apply for this job.  I apologize, but I cannot afford to contribute toward your future campaign funds at this time as my competitor has because I promised my students to buy them candy (and because I budget part of my wages each month to help my students pay for their lunch, field trips, and graduation costs), but I do hope that you will earnestly consider my application or an application from one of my colleagues.  Please choose someone with more expertise who actually loves ALL children.  

 

Sincerely,

 

D’Lee Pollock-Moore

Public School Teacher and Education Advocate