Recently, Dallas ISD's weekly staff newsletter, The Beat, advised me to "embrace flexibility." Embracing flexibility, The Beat assured me, is "one of the core tenets of the culture" of DISD. It went on to brag that, "In Dallas ISD, we will do whatever it takes to meet the needs of our students, families and employees ... Through the district's culture tenets, employees have the flexibility to adapt to 'on-the-ground' situations and create an environment that is truly responsive to needs and creates positive experiences." This was great news to hear, as a teacher! I don't know when DISD intends to implement this plan for flexibility and willingness to meet the needs of their employees, but I hope it's soon, because we can only tread water for so long before we finally drown. I hope, for example, this plan includes giving teachers the flexibility to test our kids when we feel it is appropriate, over the material that we have covered in class. Right now, all the core-content high school teachers in the district must give tests the same week of school. Within a subject area, teachers at a given school must give identical tests, even if how we taught our kids or the order in which we covered material is different. The idea behind this is to force us to all teach the same thing in the same way, to standardize instruction for our students, regardless of the fact that instructors have different teaching styles and students have different learning styles. In other words, the exact opposite of flexibility. I am also excited to see if this eagerness to meet the needs of students and employees means that DISD will be stepping away from the rigidly scripted and incredibly time-consuming Professional Learning Community (PLC) protocol that we're put through at least twice a week. Four pages of bullet points and actual scripts have replaced that time that my colleagues and I used to use to plan together, seek advice, compare instructional methods and create activities and assessments. ("Those steps look great. Let's add [fill in the blank] to your script/lesson plan" the PLC document tells my administrator to say.) If the district's core tenet of flexibility means that teachers are once more allowed to use PLC time in the way we think will best benefit our students, sign me up! In fact, teachers in DISD are being smothered.