I’m just going to say it — my job is much harder than most people will ever realize. It takes physical, mental, and emotional tolls in ways that most others jobs don’t. A lot of people are critical of teachers for complaining about the work or living with an inflated sense of importance; these were common refrains I saw all over Twitter during Teacher Appreciation Week, because it seems that even the most innocuous of positive sentiments can’t be expressed in today’s America without someone convinced they know better countering it with a negative. These people are certainly entitled to their opinions. The thing is, so many of them think they know what the job is like because they went to school themselves, I assume, and spent so many years watching teachers work. However, these attitudes are deeply rooted in ignorance.
I don’t mean that as an insult; the definition of ignorance is just a lack of knowledge or information. So many people think they know what teachers do: grading papers, handing out worksheets, teaching rhymes, coloring, gluing things together, collecting lunch money. While things of that nature of course are involved, there’s so much more to it than that. I’ve been on the job for a few weeks short of twenty-six years now. Here is a short list of some of the other things, beyond the stereotypical, I’ve done as a part of it:
*Helped a parent find resources to cope with and work through possible deportation
*Consoled students who have had family members murdered
*Served as a trusted listener for a student caught between parents in a vicious custody battle
*Slipped on the plastic gloves to clean up menstrual blood — more than once
*Gave a professional smile and handshake to a parent at open house while knowing of a likelihood of sexual abuse in the family
*Attended a student funeral
*Watched a student being wrestled into the back of a police car by three officers
*Talked a child back down to Earth when they couldn’t deal with the potential aftermath of a parent’s nervous breakdown
*Have had hundreds of dollars of personal property stolen from me
*Successfully taught equivalent fractions to a student who didn’t speak English, and had witnessed a family member’s violent death months earlier
*Tried to keep students balanced enough to learn with an incarcerated parent
*Experienced personal threats
*Had a class set of half-completed state testing booklets, and my desk, vomited on
*Tried to communicate to parents who couldn’t see beyond their own helicopter blades that their bubble-wrapped child had significant academic gaps, and that there were resources available at the school that would help if they would finally agree to take advantage of them.
School is defined by the students, though — not the parents, not the curriculum, not the staff, not even the almighty state standards. Most of the time when I encounter students in the years after I taught them we will usually just exchange polite hellos, but occasionally there are some that connect more. Some I keep up with on social media, after they finish school. I’ve had several invite me to their high school graduations, which is always a touching gesture whether I'm able to attend or not. I’ve had a small number who had grown up to become my colleagues. They may not have worked in the same building, but they had entered the profession, and became part of that group of people who truly understand what goes into teaching.
A few years back I received the following message from one of these former students, someone who had taken on a teaching job so much more demanding than I would ever want and would have experienced things to make that list I wrote above sound like trivial whining. One day, out of the blue, he sent this:
“Hey, I can’t remember if I told you this, but appreciation has become exceedingly clear the more I teach, due to its extreme absence. I just wanted to tell you that you are the reason I became a teacher. You taught me to love reading and writing, even at such a young age. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re an amazing teacher, and I’ll always cite you as the reason for my profession and passion.”
Obviously I saved that. For awhile I even thought of trying to get it printed on a coffee mug to carry around. It’s always good to have something like that in your pocket to reflect on when you get to the end of a day when you’ve had to endure little people with confusing lives they can’t figure out telling you to f-off when they feel their security is challenged, even if what you’re doing is the very opposite, in ways they can’t see or understand.
So in a nutshell, I don’t really have time for the ignorant loudmouths who want to criticize anything about my profession, or gripe about the (unpaid) time teachers get off in the summer. I surely don’t need any more notepads with encouraging quotes or apple-shaped keychains, even though such things are nice gestures. I understand there are people who honestly appreciate what teachers do, and go out of their way to express that appreciation the best ways they can.
For me, a thank you is enough, whether it arrives during a designated week of recognition or not.
If you feel I earned it, that is. But I probably have. Because I can say with some authority that anyone who has ever started their work day to the sound of a student arrival bell has in some way.
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