My Thoughts About Teaching

5th grade, 20 years now. At the end of my first year I was not sure I wanted to go back for a second. But... somehow I have kept on coming back year after year, one year at a time.

Teaching is rewarding. There's that deeply satisfying sense of contributing to the greater good of society; the opportunity to weave together my talents with my carreer; and the joy of having former students return after many years to share their successes in life and to thank me for the role I played. Of course, there are also those long summer "vacations" that give me something to look forward to, especially when the going gets rough, usually around April and May every year. (Pet peeve: the word summer "vacation" is very deceptive, as it implies time off with pay. The truth is, teachers are not paid for their summer break. Of course we like having time off. Who doesn't? However, my union, and many teachers, actually view the summer break as a "forced layoff," and they have a good point. Some teachers even feel we should be able to collect unemployment during this time. That's food for thought for people who talk about how much time teachers get off. The free time comes at a price.)

Although teaching is rewarding, it's also more stressful than I ever imagined it would be. There is absolutely no "down" time during the school year. You always have to always be "on," even when you're out in public. You have to be consistently patient, fair, firm, diplomatic, and totally selfless- and that's just with the parents. Teachers must hold their tongues and avoid expressing political opinions about controversial topics. They can't tell it "the way it really is" in our schools without risking revealing confidential information about students and their family situations- and boy, there sure is a lot of horrible stuff that goes on out there! The worst thing, though, is the "experts." Everyone in the world is an expert on education. Everyone has something to say about our "failing" public schools. The truth is, it's NOT about our failing public schools. It's about our public, failing schools, and there's a huge difference. And even more, it's about too many parents who pass on to their children this unfounded sense of entitlement to anything and everything from government and who refuse to put out any personal effort to make something positive happen for themselves. And then they blame everyone else for their own laziness and irresponsibility.

And now with "No Child Left Behind" our legislators on both side of the aisle are the worst "experts" of the bunch. Blaming teachers for the poor test scores of students who don't even speak English is like blaming the fire department for old houses that burn down, or blaming doctors when obese cigaret smokers have heart attacks. Sometime before I die it would be nice to hear someone in a leadership role stop playing the game of political correctness and simply say it: our students themselves- and their parents- and our government- and NOT ONLY our teachers- all need to take their share of responsibility and be held accountable for our students' progress. Good teachers are tired of being blamed for the failures of students who get run over by trains ("... their teachers should have warned them of the danger!") and for those few students who have made it their goal to fail academically in spite of everything we do to cater just to them. Yes, I have students who fail. But just look at these pictures of my classroom, and then explain to me exactly why that makes me a failure too.

Somehow, despite the mess created by NCLB- and by all of the politicians and special-interest groups that work to force their own agendas on our public schools- at the end of the day I still feel like I have accomplished something important in the lives of real kids- most of whom are just plain old good kids- who will one day be out there running the show. Hopefully, they'll do a better job than we have done.

Teaching does remain a noble profession, despite the lack of respect it receives.