You follow the top-down curriculum demanded of you by the dysfunctional bureaucracy we've built to control everything because teachers are disrespected in our s

You follow the top-down curriculum demanded of you by the dysfunctional bureaucracy we've built to control everything because teachers are disrespected in our society. But while doing this, you give the kids real perspective by talking about the b.s. of it and explaining critically what's wrong and what's right with the curriculum so that the kids don't think that it's their fault if they are confused, bored, or otherwise struggling with the one-size-fits-all system. [disclaimer: I'm an independent community teacher/tutor who somehow avoided for-better-or-worse getting into the normal classroom teaching role, and I'm writing from an outsider perspective, albeit on things I think about a lot.] Well, what ought to happen in a class of 30 kids? There ought to be at least 2 teachers (1 main, 1 assistant maybe) for a class that size, and they should do a mix of multimedia, field trips, reading, open discussion, group activities, and some amount of inviting each student to explore their own questions and have them help each other research those questions while you work to guide them and go around the class discussing fascinating insights of interest to each of them. They can share with each other what they've learned and not have to all be doing the same things. The focus should be not on learning facts about history but on understanding how one goes about critically researching history so that they have good critical thinking and research skills going forward in their lives and interest in history as a topic.