GUMPTION, GUTS & GRIT



There are people all over our entire nation speaking up right now against these “national standards.” What’s amazing is how every single one of us has the same exact story!!! Doesn’t anyone find that alarming??? Come on parents, if you have time to check Facebook, search Pinterest, watch TV, go to the gym, play candy crush, shop online, then YOU HAVE TIME to make your child’s education a priority!!! I don’t have time…I MAKE TIME!! Our nation is completely and utterly distracted; we are so out of tune and so complacent with what is really happening. It is plain and simple for me to see how children have become our accessory and NOT our main focus. It makes me sad and depressed, and it is time to take back our children, take back our schools and focus on strengthening our community and quit allowing these distractions to tell us how to manage our time.

Who cares what you look like, what kind of car you drive, how big your house is, how fancy it is decorated, what you ate at that restaurant yesterday that was so important you had to take a picture of it and post it on Facebook and plaster it for the entire world to see.  And yet right in front of our faces our families are being destroyed, our homes are being broken, divorce is at an all time high, our country is being bullied and parental rights are being stripped away.  Our children are suffering and everyone wants to look the other direction and ignore it!!

Every SINGLE day since I began this fight here in Oklahoma I have had dozens of phone calls, and emails from parents and teachers EVERYWHERE (as far as West Virginia) contacting me to encourage me to fight, to support me, and share their heart, to push me forward and say Thank You! Then they go back to their ritual of all these distractions. WHERE ARE YOU? WHY ARE YOU EXPECTING ME TO FIGHT FOR YOU? I will and I am, but why will you not join me??? I don’t want you behind me…I want you beside me! This is NEVER ever going to stop by one or even a few hundred people, this is a revival, and this is another form of a revolution. This is the modern day David VS Goliath and Martin Luther King!!! How can you not see it? The red flags and warnings signs are everywhere, but you have to stop these distractions long enough to pay attention. Isn’t this still America? The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave! What happened to WE THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE?

Currently in Oklahoma we have about a dozen powerful, money hungry BULLIES dictating to us the people and constituents with SCARE TACTICS, oppressing us to be FEARFUL and threatening us to keep our mouth shut. Don’t you wonder why? What is their purpose? It says a trillion times in the Bible DO NOT BE AFRAID, DO NOT FEAR, and yet we buckle to their scare tactics. If this is an educational system that is suppose to change education for the better and be so amazing then why are we not allowed to openly discuss it, why is it a secret, and why are they having to shove it down our throats? Why are teachers being threatened to lose their jobs if they say anything against it? Honestly, to watch teachers continue to teach to the test, and lose valuable time being able to actually teach my children is disgusting. Teachers are forced to do more paperwork and regulations than actual teaching, and that makes me sick to my stomach. They are told you MUST do this regardless if they agree with it or not. And yet they turn around and say it's just standards and that teachers have the ability to teach whatever they want. That is nothing but LIES, straight LIES. How can a teacher control what they teach if their students are expected to pass the end of the year test? How can a child pass a test if you don't teach those specific contents? And the teacher's evaluation is based off the student test results. We are losing AMAZING teachers every single day, and our children are losing valuable fundamentals in their education. And this is happening in 46 states across the country. Unbelievable!

I am asking each of you to start reaching into your gut, to start relying on your Christian principles, your values, and your instincts and follow your convictions. PLEASE, I have a giant target on my back and I have many supporters whom I am grateful for. But the target becomes smaller when more people join in! What if ALL 65 teachers at each school united together and said enough is enough? Are they going to fire the whole school? What if teachers did this across the entire state? Are you too scared to spend your time fighting to protect these innocent children paying the consequences? Is Pinterest, Facebook, and candy crush more important than your child’s entire educational foundation? Children are a gift from God, our most precious resource and yet we continue to put them on the back burner. Including myself, I am TOTALLY and COMPLETELY 100% guilty, but now I am changing that. I have made a conscious decision to not allow it anymore.  I am going to be more engaged, choosing wisely what I allow to manage or take control of my time. One of those is becoming active in the one thing I hate most, politics! Legislation starts on February 3^rd and I am making it my duty to learn more about what and who is controlling the education and then I am contacting the legislators to let them know I as a parent am not going to tolerate my child’s education to be bullied anymore. Ignoring this problem does not make it go away, and neither does walking around discussing it privately or complaining about it. Taking action and demanding our legislators listen to us as Oklahoma constituents is the only way.

Let’s all commit to removing our distractions in order to be informed so we can start making a difference!!