{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Libertarian Christian Podcast","title":"Ep 293: Angela Harders: Journey Away from being a Toxic Teacher","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2837,"description":"In this episode, Doug Stuart interviews former public school teacher, Angela Harders. Harders is author of the book, \"Tales of a Toxic Teacher: Exposing the Cycles of Abuse Within Our Schools\". Harders discusses her dreams and intentions when she first began teaching, and how quickly those dreams were squelched by the public school system. Many teachers like her share similar experiences, and Harders is calling out the public education, not as \"broken\" but as operating as it's designed. People who become teachers usually do so because they envision a better world for kids through their education. But reality soon rears its head \"within the first 5 minutes\" of starting a job as a teacher. Harders explains how the public education system churns out traumatized kids and pass them through to be \"society's problems.\" Not only is the system abusive, but the impact of the abuse cultivates kids who become abusive themselves. Harders, a public school teacher for 12 years, even describes how the zeros she gave one continually absent student were mysteriously changed to 60% (just passing) without her knowledge or consent. Harders rebuffs the tired criticism that public education is \"broken.\" It's not, she says, it operates as expected. Which is to say that it's intended to create submissive, compliant, factory-worker-type followers, ready for employment and trained to never question assigned authority. The complaints, however, that teachers are not given adequate supplies or leeway to be a creative teacher is all true. She had to get creative with her field trips so that students could make some tangible connection to otherwise foreign ideas that even we might take for granted. For example, she describes taking her students to a baseball game so they could understand the assigned reading which involved baseball. Hardships for students abound, but so also do hardships for teachers. As a Spanish teacher, one student asked her why he should care about learning Spanish when he...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/_xYS0SShA1KrKcrVFqXWyj90yhkxE6xSYO7xJUc6g9c/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzQ5Mjc2LzE3MDY3/MjA4ODgtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}