What I Would Say to Teachers

Dear TEAMS,

I have gotten used to writing you letters these days, so much so that I found myself composing one to a group in our culture who is very expressive this time of year.  Here is what I wrote to them.

Love, 

Dear Professional Teachers,

I want to thank you for your contribution to society.  There is no way anyone knows what you have to go through every day to achieve the goals laid out for you in your jobs.  Most of my friends who are teachers got into teaching for way more than the administrative end of things and politics, which you have to do more of than you ever dreamed.  Thank you, thank you, thank you for choosing to teach and wanting to influence the next generation.

I’d also like to say that many of the teachers I know navigate the school waters well and never seem to lose their vision, mostly because they know they have a higher calling bestowed from above to make the world a better place.  These people rarely make comments about their jobs that confuse me.

 There are some things that confuse me about other teacher’s attitudes, sometimes, which I have gleaned from friends’ Facebook pages, interaction at community events, and when attending sports events at our local school.  I am expressing them here:

• Most people in the United States have to face all of the same challenges you do in your job, theirs just take on different faces.  I get confused when you adopt an attitude that no one could possibly understand what it is like where you work.  I think you underestimate the people with whom you are speaking.
• The only thing more frustrating than working with 24-30 young people all day?  Working with more than 24-30 adults who act like young people.
• Most people who go to work have to be at their place of work for at least 8 hours every day.  There is never a day where they will put something off until tomorrow so they can go home after 6 hours.
• Most people get 2 weeks of vacation a year.  Two weeks that they can sleep until they wish, stay up as late as they want, and do whatever they want all day.  Even if you are taking classes for professional continuing education, you are still experiencing time freedom for 10 weeks a year that most of the rest of the working people in America do not have.  And if you are working in the Summers to make up for your salary…good for you for understanding that you are in the same boat as the rest of us.
• Most of the rest of the people in America do not understand your dread at starting another school year, namely because they experience the dread of having to go back to work every Monday morning, 50 weeks a year.  I am confused because you never seem to show them the same compassion you want to have every August for that fact.
• Every single person on earth is underappreciated.  Most of them have people in authority over them who don’t understand them.  I am confused because you seem to feel you are in a special group, deserving of special strokes because you are underappreciated and teach school.  It makes no sense to me.
• I am confused because you are upset or offended that parents homeschool their children.  Yes, they really are saying that they think you cannot provide the same education that they can for their child.  Why does that bother you, if you became a teacher because you were concerned about education and children in America?  Thank God that you:  1) have an ally in that mission; and that 2) you don’t have their kid in your class—because parents who are that concerned about their children’s education would be as critical of you as you are of them.
• I am confused when you see a Snow Day as a special day of “vacation” to get your laundry done, catch up on some undone things, or watch morning talk shows and then cannot understand why people aren’t rejoicing with you.  Mostly, it’s because those people still have to get to their jobs through the weather and fit everything in their 8 hour day around the extra burden of their longer commute, all while figuring out what to do with their children because the school called a Snow Day.
• I am confused that you have tenure.  And the corollary to that is that I’m confused that you are bothered by CEOs making lots of money and then offered a Golden Parachute if things don’t work out.
• I am confused that you don’t like your salary and say teachers should earn more.  But since people have been saying that for the last 40 years, where were you when you decided to become a teacher and everyone was telling you that you wouldn’t make a lot of money?  It’s okay to not have realized what that really meant in light of having adult expenses—we all did that—but why exactly do you think you shouldn’t have to do what everyone else does to supplement an inadequate income?
• I am confused at your anger at society in general.  My student teaching was the best thing that ever happened to me, because I saw in the Teacher’s Lounge what most people who taught for a living were like.  Mostly, they were angry, mean, and petty.  They didn’t like people they worked with, and let them know about it.  They talked about problem kids in the school as an annoyance and not as a human being who desperately needed help.  Almost all of them were on anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds and told me that I’d understand once I got to their situation.  The teacher I student taught under went on vacation to the Bahamas for a week and called in sick every day, so that I could “experience the real life of a teacher for a week.”

Yes, I am confused at so many things.  Because what it seems you are confused about is that you don’t teach to influence the next generation.  You influence the next generation just by showing up.  Whether it is a good influence will be entirely up to you.