The old adage, "Those who can do; those who can't teach" was the way society lumped all of us teachers into one big, stereotypical pile. Clearly some type of logical explanation was needed for the country to understand why a person who had attained in many cases several degrees from a College or University, to opt into being a poorly paid babysitter, counselor, and confidante who, if that person was lucky, might get the students in his/her care to retain anything he/she spent 180 days pouring into the skulls of the newest generation. I mean, clearly these people wanted to be other things- lawyers, doctors, engineers, nurses, authors, journalists, dentists, business owners- and just didn't finish said program. Or didn't have the grades. They had to fail and opted to teach, right?
For the longest time, I would have been a very outspoken dissenter to this sentiment and sentiments like these: "You teachers make TOO MUCH MONEY to not work 8 hours a day" or "2 months paid vacations?" or my favorite, "You get every holiday off." This might be true; but ask the teacher who only holds a Bachelor's degree whether they still worry if they can keep the lights on. Or the teachers such as myself who have children at home whom they know less than the children they spend the majority of their days with. Ask me if two full months is enough time for me to spend with my children who sacrifice the relationship with mommy they so deserve because her hours are spent planning for 4-5 preparations daily, for ten months a year and into the summer. And in order to pay for that cherished time off with my babies, my ten month pay is spread among twelve months of pay. But, I digress.
The real question lies in why people think so lowly of teachers. After all, I have probably the same amount of education as all of my lawyer friends and doctor friends. I went to school 6 years and received two degrees. Soon, I plan to finish what I started and dedicate another 2 years to receiving the Ph.D. I have long deserved. That will amount to the same if not more. Yet, I drive the Subaru and they drive the Benz. Why?
Teachers probably have the most important job on the planet. We are who prepare the doctors, lawyers and writers who will be. Why didn't we become it ourselves? As an English teacher, why am I not a writer? Did I fail, and because of my failure, opted to become a teacher?
I can answer this question with a robust and emphatic "NO"! I am a teacher because I want to be. Because I love teaching. Because it IS my destiny. I have been teaching since I was 8 years old: I would line up my stuffed animals, and teach. There. I said it.
I plan 7 days a week. I collaborate with teachers. Teachers are some of my closest friends. I am married to a fabulous band director who performs miracles everyday in his band room. I spend hours reading, trying to become a better teacher. I steal from other teachers. My life can be summed up in one way, and one way only: I teach, therefore I am.
And, for the longest time, I thought this was the way of life for most "teachers".
Recently, my students have begun to prove to me that my thoughts about my "colleagues" were probably false. On my students' blogs, they began being very vocal about the dissatisfaction with their classes. Several wished to graduate early in order to escape "wasting their time". Several contemplated transferring in order to seek a better education, but questioned whether that would be worth leaving me. During one class session, they lamented about teachers not checking their work, teachers letting videos do the teaching. About teachers lecturing daily. Even some from their desks. As I rubbed my swollen feet that evening from being on my feet 9 hours, I began to question myself: do I take this too seriously?
Because of this new information, I began to be more observant of what was going on around me. I noticed the alarming number of teachers who wear jeans. More than on just on Friday. Who showed up to parent teacher conferences with jump suits, as if they were meeting the parents in the gym to shoot hoops, rather than meet about somebody's kid they were probably failing. Who were late getting to those meetings. Who come to work late because they want to. Who admittedly don't plan. Was I the crazy one for refusing to wear jeans to work at all? Or wearing two-piece suits to class weekly? For having my degrees on my walls in plain view?
Perhaps teachers have become their own worst enemies. Perhaps we are the people who have made this job not have the rank to be considered a profession. I mean, how would you feel if your doctor wore jeans to your appointment with a Cowboys t-shirt? Or didn't have his degrees on the wall to show that he was, in fact, proud of those degrees and thus a proven professional. Teachers downgrade the teaching profession.
I am a teacher. I love what I do. I did not get into the business of teaching because I sucked at being a writer (because I do not). I did not get into teaching because I was upset with the job I had out of college; teaching WAS the job I had right out of college. Teaching was never an afterthought for me, even after my mother forced me to engineering because she was afraid I wouldn't be well off as a teacher. I just changed my major freshman year and told her a few months shy of graduation 4 years later. I plan to teach for the duration of my adulthood because it is the career path I have chosen. There are many teachers like me, and we cannot let those who do not exemplify these standards water down our status as professionals, because in all honesty WE are the professional's professional; after all, would there be any doctors without doctors who taught them? Would there be any engineers without a physics teacher or calculus teacher who showed them the foundations they needed to be engineers? Would there be anything, job, careers or otherwise without a teacher? No.
It is my hope and desire, that more people who take this job as seriously as it is will outweigh the dead-weight that exist in any profession. Hopefully, more people will embrace being a professional who is a teacher and not do this because they had no other way to make a living. In addition, it is my hope principals will demand more of their teachers in terms of grooming and attire. One dresses for success, and I do not see much success in wearing jeans every Friday- As Harry Wong says, jeans are made for leisure. To add to that, in a culture where students are expected to wear uniforms, how appropriate is it for you to wear "jeggings" and your students cannot? Who is the role model? In some classrooms, it has become harder to tell.
Lastly, it is my wish that teachers truly understand this glaring fact: we hold these students' futures in our delicate hands. We predict, based on how well we engage their minds, who they will become: how eloquent they will be, how thoughtful they should become. Lesson planning is the single most beneficial way you can impact your students. No one learns nothing from a teacher who teaches on the whim. Planning before hand enables creativity, balance, equity, and structure. Have I always been good at lesson planning? Absolutely not. In fact, in 9 years of being in a classroom, this might be the first year I've gotten great at it. Do we take breaks? Yes. Is it often? NO. And when a lesson plan is altered or flat out doesn't work, I've learned to be quick on my feet about changing direction. I can tell when it doesn't work by reading my students. I will never dismiss the importance of lesson planning because one or two plans didn't work out as I planned or the principal sprung a homeroom day instead of my 1st period. Lesson planning is NOT an exercise of futility, and in today's high stakes testing and teacher evaluations, you'd better get reacquainted with it. If you are not creative, there are so many lesson plans online that you could ever dream of having access to. Submit and share your lesson plans that do work. Write for journals in your area of expertise. Join your professional content area organization to collaborate with fellow teachers like you. Be the professional! This is what professionals do.
And never, ever stop learning. The best analogy I can think of to illustrate the everlasting need for teachers to be avid learners is this: If a new cancer is discovered (say cancer of the nostrils perhaps), and my doctor has done no reading on it whatsoever, he is no longer qualified to be my doctor. If I have this new disease, he knows not how it looks, the symptoms, or what it could do to me. Why am I paying him then??? In teaching, you have never "arrived". Instead, you should constantly be "arriving", staying on top of everything that is new about how students learn best.
Complacency has no place in education. A complacent teacher- in mind, body, work ethic, and appearance- is an ineffective teacher. And teachers like the aforementioned, make things harder for professionals like me.
