Teaching is a job that many people pursue as both a way to make a living and as a lifelong passion. They may have wanted to teach young children since the moment they began looking for what they wanted to do when they grew up.
Kali and Joshua Fontanilla are a married couple who love teaching and they were teaching children in California. After becoming fed up with the ‘overly politicized’ atmosphere in the public school system, they decided to change schools so they quit their job.
They opened their own school, called the Exodus Institute and they are busy teaching the children something that is far different than what you would find on a regular school curriculum. Rather than pushing their political views onto the students, they are now running their own school and taking their 20 years of experience in education to help students.
Joshua said: “I’d say that in general, being a conservative or just somebody who believes in traditional American values is something that makes you kind of endangered or marked in the public school system.
“It’s gotten to the point in public schools where you can’t just mind your own business and keep your politics to yourself, because they push it on everyone that you have to participate in liberal politics.”
Kali also says that she can see the differences in the short amount of time they have been teaching at their new school. She said that there were many things teachers didn’t have to face at the time and there were pressures to put pronouns in the bio or email signature.
One thing there wasn’t pressure for was to ask the students about their pronouns, and it seemed as if everybody had an agenda. According to Kali, things tended to escalate at other schools after George Floyd was killed in 2020.
Kali has been offered gifts because she is half black, but she doesn’t want that type of praise for her teaching. She said: “I don’t want to be recognised for my skin colour, I want to be recognised for the work I have done as a teach in the classroom.
“What if a white teacher wore a ‘white educators matter’ mask?
“It’s also making a political statement. Me wearing a black educators matter mask is a political statement.”
This will be an interesting one to watch.