In three weeks I will be back in my classroom. I will be starting my 44th year of teaching. Actually, this isn’t quite true because teaching isn’t the type of occupation a teacher starts at the beginning of the school year and stops at the end of the school year. Instead, it’s a very demanding and very consuming continuum. It requires constant planning (analyzing and designing), preparation, assessment, evaluation, and reflection in a myriad of scenarios. It demands a dedication to self improvement. One must constantly strive to improve teaching methods, constantly strive to incorporate the latest technology in classroom instructions, relentlessly try to understand the needs of each child and the concerns of their parents, and persistently strive to become thoroughly verse in districts, states, and federal standards and policies.
Tailoring, augmenting, modifying, creating, and re-teaching lessons to meet the needs of children with behavior intervention plans, individual education plans, English as a second language, physical and cognitive disabilities, high rates of absenteeism (due to illnesses, family related problems, truancies, incarnations, etc.) are on-going processes. Additionally, teachers must create a system for measuring the progress of each child. This means, in an increasing number of cases, teachers must find the appropriate time and setting for administering tests that meet the stringent state and federal standards particular to the circumstances of each child. Moreover, teachers must find additional time (usually before or after the school day) to answer parents’ emails and phone calls, or to confer with them about incidents at school, missing assignments, school projects, grades, field trips, parent-teacher conferences, and a host of other issues. Teachers must also find added time (usually before and after school) to record grades and document weekly progress reports, which can be quite lengthy, for children with special needs or children in general ― under certain circumstances.
Summer vacation is simply the time teachers use to regroup (meet and discuss what’s working, what’s not working; and reviews goal, objectives, standards, and policies), upgrade (find ways to make the system more effective and efficient, and find ways to make the system more user friendly for everyone), acquire new skills (learn new technologies, new teaching strategies, and new research findings about today’s students), gain familiarization with incoming classes (gain some understanding of the incoming students needs, background, and parental concerns), and stock pile (acquire the books, computer programs, equipments, visual and manual aids, and other resources for meeting all challenges).
However, there are wonderful, surprising rewards that come interspersed in this teaching continuum. They include letters from former students who are now doctors, lawyers, nurses, engineers, entrepreneurs . . . thanking us for the wonderful lessons we taught them. They also include personal visits from parents, whose children have been so positively influenced by us that their children decided to follow in our footsteps, by becoming teachers. And finally, they include the number of former students who visit us, for the purpose of reminiscent about their wonderful learning experiences they had as our students, and the purpose of telling us the lists of incredible accomplishments that have resulted from these learning experiences.
I wrote this article because my teaching collogues and I have been referred to by Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) and others as “overpaid,” “greedy,” “incompetent,” “lazy,” “unmotivated,” and a slew of other negative terms. In this article and several others, which will follow soon, I hope to give readers authentic glimpses into the world of public school teachers. Hopefully, it will give them a better appreciation for the challenges we are facing.
I am praying to God that other teachers will do the same.
