My Facebook friend Brook, who said I could quote her, recently had this up as her status:
Just a quick bit of perspective. So, parents, do you really understand the amount of blood, sweat, and tears goes into being a teacher? Remember the last family vacation you planned, the frustration of trying to lock your family schedule down, the disappointment when plans fell through, the stress of trying to secure an alternate? Well, teachers deal with that EVERY day, only instead of doing it for a family of 4, they have to contend with the wants, needs, and sense of entitlement for families of 20+ from all walks of life, beliefs, and ideals. While you work your 8 hours and get paid for it, your child's teacher is working 10+ and there's NO overtime. Those field trips, parties, and events all take time to plan. The lessons and projects that keep you children engaged; when do you think all that work happens? During school hours? Don't kid yourself. Teachers do it on their time, for your children, because they knew, long before you give birth, that those people are our future. They are educators, parents, social workers, and therapists all wrapped into one and in addition to the task of mentoring your kids, they have to handle the needy personalities of the parents. The wants of an overprotective mother, or the denial that your kid really is the asshole everyone says they are, not the sweet angel victim of every social situation. They have to attempt to do damage control from addicted parents and try to prove there's another way of life to these kids. Most people take for granted what teachers do for their children and that's a travesty. As parents most of us would lose our shit if we had to put up with what teachers do everyday. Just acknowledging it.
It is Teacher Appreciation Week, and I'll tell you, some of us live for that week. Most of the time, we get blame (from parents, administrators, government, and society as a whole), pity (from people who make three times as much as us with the same amount of education or who don't have to scrub marker and snot off their clothes every day), scorn (especially true for teachers who aren't parents, often from family/acquaintances/parents of students who pull out the highly insulting "well, if you had kids, you'd understand x, y, or z.").
We go into the professional knowing all this and we all have reasons that it's worth it. Those reasons all have names, such as Stephanie, the incredible student I had in third grade who is seeing her dream of going to Howard University manifest itself after years of hard work. She not only makes me proud to be a teacher - I would pay her whole tuition if I was able to because she'll be such an incredible investment. We don't go into this profession to be appreciated, but we also are often not prepared for the amount of blame, ridicule, etc. that we have to deal with.
Brook, it's parents like you that help us keep going. I'm no longer in the classroom but still teaching. Whether or not I ever do go back to the classroom, I will never forget the feeling of going into the last stretch of the school year, with the kids acting crazy, the classrooms overheating because they act like greenhouses, trying to give standardized tests when you want to actually TEACH the kids what they still need to learn because so much of your time has been wasted testing, madly planning field trips and end of the year activities, and dealing with parents who think you should be spending all your energy on their one child. It makes a huge difference to just have this acknowledged, so thank you to everyone who's appreciating their child's teacher. Please know that the teacher loves your child and would do anything for them, even when they're destroying the classroom.
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