By Cynthia McCabe

When people were attacking her and her fellow dedicated public school teachers, Florida fourth-grade teacher Jamee Miller got mad. And then she got to typing.

The result? An essay called ‘I Am a Teacher’ which caught fire in recent weeks on Facebook and blogs as supporters of teachers attacked by budget-slashing lawmakers and critics trying to score political points took it to heart and then took it online. (Full essay text appears at bottom.)

Shawna Christenson, a teacher in West Palm Beach, Fla., wrote on Facebook after posting it to her own profile last week: ‘Some folks need to be reminded that we do so much more than leave and enter when the bell rings when they think achievement is the only way to measure us.’

Miller, a National Education Association and Florida Education Association member who has been teaching for seven years, wrote the essay a year ago largely for herself and then put it away. But when the controversial Senate Bill 6 was recently careening through the GOP-controlled legislature, she dusted it off and posted it on Facebook. Education experts said SB6, which Gov. Charlie Crist ultimately vetoed last week to support teachers, would have made Florida one of the most teacher-hostile states in the country. Even though it was vetoed, similar anti-teacher efforts are cropping up in other states from like-minded opponents.

‘I was just getting so enraged because there was such ignorance from the people attacking teachers,’ says Miller. ‘Especially these misconceptions about what it is we can actually control as educators.’

Her essay, which in recent weeks was referenced on the Florida House floor, reprinted by several Florida newspapers and went viral online, has taken on a life of its own, Miller says. ‘What I’m saying isn’t unique. It’s just that the heart of that message resonates with everyone in our world.’

That’s because in the past year they’ve been slammed by a troubling development: political opportunists attacking public education professionals.

‘I feel more than ever I have to be on the defensive to prove I’m not a bad teacher,’ she says. ‘It’s really unfortunate. Even five years ago it was assumed a teacher was great until a teacher wasn’t doing their job.’

And when critics broadly paint today’s teachers as ineffective, there’s no better way to show how wrong they are than pointing to Miller’s own resume. She was Seminole County Teacher of the Year in 2008. Each year she spends $1,000 of her own money on classroom supplies and her students. Last year, she and her husband donated $30,000 to create a fellowship at the University of Florida that helps elementary education majors working toward a master’s degree in education technology.

One of the more noxious provisions of SB6 that upset Miller and her colleagues was a mandate that standardized testing be the primary basis for teachers’ employment, certification and salary. In Florida, students are subjected to a high-stakes test called the FCAT. The law would have further reduced children to a test score and ignored that their lives and their achievements are more complex and nuanced than that.

‘To have all that I pour into my students every year come down to just one test is so frustrating,’ Miller says. ‘I have zero problems with accountability. But come into my classroom. I’m eager to show you the realities.’

For instance, this past year, Miller’s realities included having a student who missed 30 days of school, a student whose parents were arrested right before the standardized test day, and a third student who vomitted on her test booklet and was unable to retake it.

What teachers who contact her with their heartfelt thanks want to convey is that they’re just as concerned about the state of public education as anyone else.

‘We all want education to be fixed, we just want to be in on that problem solving,’ Miller says.

Full text of Jamee Miller’s ‘I Am a Teacher’ essay: