For the Teachers

Teaching is the profession that makes all other professions possible. Our job as educators is to make a difference in the lives of our young people. We have the responsibility of shaping what our communities, and by extension our nation, will look like in the future. Teachers understand that ALL kids are OUR kids. Starting on Day 1, we learn about them. We talk with them. We listen to them. We let them get to know us. We find out which teams they are on and go to their games/matches. We chaperone dances, we help out during tryouts, and we sponsor clubs and activities. And this doesn’t stop just because they are no longer in our classrooms. Once they move on to the next grade, they are still OUR kids. Because at the end of the day, we’re not teaching a set of objectives, a unit, or even a curriculum. We are investing in our collective future.        

Teaching is challenging for innumerable reasons that people outside the profession just cannot understand (even if they claim that they do).

There is ALWAYS a new initiative.

There is ALWAYS another meeting.

There is ALWAYS another deadline.

There is always, ALWAYS testing. 

SO. 
MUCH. 
TESTING. 

(They should really tell our preservice teachers how much time they will spend watching students look at computer screens.)

And while we love the kids (because we wouldn’t be here otherwise), they’re KIDS. They act accordingly.

Picture it...

I’ve had to stop keeping hand sanitizer in plain sight because they have figured out ways to weaponize it. I spend my own money on classroom library books, bins, and labels, and the students love nothing more than peeling off those labels and/or defacing the books. Picture the sheer panic when our community volunteer comes in to read with 6^th graders, and I’m trying to hide the books with the anatomically inaccurate drawings in them. They sit on wooden bookshelves and break them. They hide each other’s chromebooks. They steal candy (and pens, pencils, and books). And quite often, they do the exact opposite of what I’ve just asked them to do.

But, you know what else?

They see me in the stands at the track meet and come over for a hug or high-five. They seek me out in the hallway in the morning to tell me about the books that they’re reading. They trust me with things that are going on in their lives at school and at home. And on very rare occasions, they write me amazing letters from high school telling me that I had a positive impact on their lives; that something that I did or said mattered to them.  

We know that teachers don’t go into this profession for the money, or for the “summers off”. Teaching is a calling. We do it because we believe in our students and we truly hope that what we do makes a difference. As Pernille Ripp stated in her book, Passionate Readers, "Teaching would be so much easier if we could see the influence that the learning may have on a child, but most of the time we do not. We can only plant the seeds that hopefully will grow into something bigger than even we could imagine.”   

For ALL the teachers...

I see you. 

I value what you do each and every day. 

I believe that you make a difference.

Thank you. 🍎