School Daze

I miss teaching every fall when school supply displays dominate every store and I see kids walking past my house loaded down with backpacks, sporting new clothes, on their way to Deer Creek Middle School or the elementary just on the other side of the park.  I loved the first day of kids, the getting-to-know-you activities, the inevitable explanations of rules, the feel of new groups of kids in my classroom.  I also miss school on the last day before Christmas vacation and the last day before the freedom of summer.  All the other times?  You can have them.

There are some things I don't miss about the beginning of the school year, especially now that I am a slave to social media.  I hate the inevitable articles and special reports every fall about our failing school system.  I hate the yearly push to take funding away from underperforming schools and divert it to charter schools that haven't even had time  to underperform.  Now that I'm retired and my only vested interest in schools is my grandchildren, I have found myself gathered outside of schools with parents who gossip about teachers, who threaten to go to the principal for the slightest transgression, who generally act like they have some idea about what it is like to be in a classroom.

Case in point:  My youngest grandchild, Jaydee, is starting preschool this year with Miss Karen.  As soon as Franny and Ken discovered that Miss Karen was the teacher, a friend and neighbor started telling them horror stories.  Miss Karen doesn't let kids talk!  Miss Karen isn't as warm and friendly as Miss Barb.  The thing is that after Jaydee's first day, they discovered that Miss Karen is in fact a sweetheart.  She lets kids talk.  She loves her job.  Jaydee can't wait to go back to school tomorrow.  I hate the gossip, the rumors, the stupidity.

But that isn't the main object of my loathing.  The thing I really hate is the rash of aphoristic sayings about the difficulties and sacrifices of teaching that litter Facebook every fall.  They always have the same messages:

"If you can read this, thank a teacher."
"I'm a teacher and I spend an inordinate amount of time grading papers at home."
"I stopped being a teacher because I had to lesson plan and call parents on my own time."
"I know a teacher who spends money out of his own pocket on extra pencils and pens, extra notebooks, boxes of Kleenex, drawers full of snacks for his students.  Isn't that noble?"
"I quit teaching, even though I loved it, because I could make more money as a waiter, or a waitress, or an Uber driver."

Whenever I see something like that on my feed, I quickly ignore it.  If I responded to it, all those teacher lovers out there would hate me.

Those messages, well-intentioned as they might be, demean my profession.  They make teachers out to be chronic whiners.  If we expect to be treated like professionals, we should try acting professional.  A lot of my former students are lawyers and doctors (probably due to the excellent instruction they received in high school) and as yet none of them have posted lamentations about all the travails facing them in their day to day work.

Someone, probably someone who has posted all those "lets love our teachers" screeds, will be quick to jump in now and remind me that lawyers and doctors make more money than teachers.  They have more security,  more respect from the community, etc.  Well, yeah.  What's your point?  Did you really become a teacher for the remuneration and the love pouring out from the community?  Is it possible that you are that stupid?

I went into teaching with my eyes wide open.  My professors all let me know that my pay would doom me to the middle class IF I was clever enough to marry someone who was also a teacher.  They let me know that I would be working 60 hour weeks, sometimes more.  They let me know that I would have to make troubling phone calls, deal with dull witted bosses and all the rest.  I didn't let that dissuade me.  Neither did any of my friends who ended up in the profession.  When I got my first job at Marycrest High School, my starting salary was $6,300 per year.  I chose to get paid on the ten month plan, $630 a month.  I worked driving trucks during the summer to augment my income.  That was 1972 and I thought it was all the money in the world.

Two years later, Jeffco hired me for a whopping $8,500.  My ship had come in.  I was lucky about buying school supplies.  I taught high school, so I didn't have to buy extra pencils and pens (although I did), extra notebooks (Big Chiefs--although I did), boxes of Kleenex (although boxes were stationed all around the room).  It wasn't a big deal.  Buying extra school supplies, putting up posters purchased out of my own pocket, bringing in spare furniture taking up space in my basement, that is what I did. That is what all teachers did.  I suppose we could have refused.  Could have marched on the ad building.  Could have written nasty letters to the editor.  But nobody did that.  We were all too busy working with kids to worry about how unfair every thing was.  For the most part, we loved every minute of it.

Looking back on my career through the prism of outrage that seems to be in vogue nowadays, I still can't see the problem.  I signed up to be a teacher.  The rewards continue to come in the form of Facebook friends who are former students, lifelong friends who are former teachers.  The sacrifices, the hassles, the parent complaints, the patronizing attitude of politicians and the media, none of that compares to the good stuff.

Please stop whining.  To my way of thinking, I had the best job in the world.