Two weeks ago I got called in my office and there's five other teachers sitting there with us. The administration comes up and says, hey, guess what? You guys are no longer certified to teach at the high school. You guys are highly qualified but you're not certified. What's interesting about that is most of us were seasoned teachers. I'm in my 20th year teaching. I've got a master's degree in our science. I've taught our science for many years. I'm certified and qualified to teach at the junior college level. But now I find myself in a situation where I no longer meet those requirements at the high school level. Now these decisions are made by people who rarely ever get into a classroom to see what a K-12 educator actually goes through. It's crazy to me that I could be highly qualified one day and then find myself still highly qualified but no longer certified. It's almost like somebody at the Arizona Department of Education woke up and said, gee, I have a great idea. Let's make life more difficult for educators. There's thousands of educators that probably don't fit or need definitions so we can actually make some money off of them. It's not about the 60 bucks. It's the principal of the thing. Policies are constantly changing that have no variance whatsoever on making education better for our students and for teachers. Just because I go out and get another piece of paper that says, your certified at the high school level does not make me a better teacher, does not help a student whatsoever. It doesn't change anything except you got 60 bucks from every single teacher in Arizona that didn't meet this definition. Let's say I have another piece of paper on my wall that says you are now certified at the high school level. It costs what? Five cents a piece of paper, maybe two minutes worth of time to print it all up. It's all digital these days. Ready to have somebody sitting around the office all day that sits there and prints these things up one paper out of time at the rate of 60 bucks an hour. What's going on? We educators would love to understand what thought process was going on in the brains of those people who came up with this idea. It just doesn't make any sense. I can tell you how many educators actually come up with 60 bucks because this is how I'm going to do it. I can go out and I can fix two computers and I'll have 60 bucks. I can actually go to the restaurant that I work at at nights and I can work two extra nights so that I can give you 60 bucks. You see teaching in Arizona does allow me to pay for my housing. I was paying for my food. What it doesn't allow me to do is pay for fun. I take my wife out to you a couple of times or I've got to go work and get that money. How about the prepaid cell phones I got from my kids? Heck, do I need to cancel my Netflix account for six months so that I could pay somebody at the state apartment 60 bucks? I mean, again, we're all questioning this the purpose as to why this is. That's my 60 bucks. I earned at Fair and Square. What right does the state have to accept to just make up some policy? Nobody understands whatsoever. We're just all sitting here thinking, who's bright idea was this? Not about the money. It's about the fact that the state of Arizona, the education department, should have counted me and said, Mr. Weird, dude, you're awesome. Your students love you. Well, at least most of them do. We think you've done great. We appreciate all the extra time that you've spent in your classroom making sure that class was fun and energetic and exciting. That's what the state of Arizona should have been saying to the hardworking teachers of this state. Guys, show us that thank you, thank you, thank you for being willing to teach our students. To show our appreciation because of your long dedicated hours, we're going to go ahead and give all teachers who have been teaching at the different levels who don't quite have that certification move, demonstrated the skill to teach. We're going to give you that certificate because we're grateful for all the work that you've done for our schools in this state. I'm going to go ahead and pay the 60 bucks because I don't see any way around this. I think all the other teachers that were in that meeting with us, and again, there were several set season teachers that are finding themselves having to pay 60 bucks. We're all going to pay that money because I like teaching at the high school. I like teaching the students I've got. I go teach at the elementary schools, but that's not what I want to do. My passion is teaching the subject I'm teaching and I'm good at it. And so are all the other teachers that are finding themselves in the same situation. In all reality, whoever came up with this absurd idea of the Arizona Department of Education's s**t. And I don't think I'm the only one that believes that. If there's five teachers at our school and we're a small school that have to have a change in being highly qualified, then check out some of the big schools. I'll bet you there's just tons of people. Somebody somewhere made some money off of this transaction because unless that money comes back to education somehow, I just can't see how a little piece of paper is going to cost 60 bucks per person. Anyway, I call about all teachers. You know what? Let your legislatures know. Let your let the Arizona Department of Education know that instead of making policies without understanding what's really going on, maybe it should get out into a classroom once. Well, I'm going to visit the hardworking teachers of this great state because educators are leaving because of silly ass-9 policies like this. There's other reasons too, but that's really a big one. And I'll also call upon you guys in politics that actually make decisions to come on. Ask a teacher first. You ask parents, you ask special interests, you ask testing companies, but when do you actually come in and actually ask teachers? And I'm not talking about just any teacher. I'm talking about the best of the best teachers in every district across this country. You get us together, we could help the state of Arizona become a much better place to educate our children. Maybe, just maybe we'll stop being a state that is ranked lowest among all states. That's embarrassing. And it's because of the policies have been set forth and we're tired of it. So, Department of Education, you know what? Reply to this video. Make another video. You tell us what your thinking was in this. Okay, come out and explain it because all I got was a letter saying, by the way, as of January, you're no longer certified. You give us 60 bucks and we'll make it good. It sounds like extortion to me. So, feel free to share this video around. Let your lectures, let your snow, let the state department know and the state department wants to answer this. Make another video. Get it back to us. Explain this. Send emails out to teachers before making stupid policies like you just did. Thank you very much.