Well, what can I say about this week? For one thing, it is only half way over. I feel like it should have ended long before now. If you don't know me, I am an elementary school teacher. I teach a lively bunch of third graders at a public school. This is my fourth year teaching and I LOVE it. If you are also a teacher, then you know that as much as I love this job, it is highly demanding and stressful, but extremely rewarding, which motivates me to keep at it.
I always love my students, the curriculum, and for the most part, the hours. I am no morning person, but I tell myself that sleeping late all summer makes up for that. Wouldn't you tell yourself that if you had to hear a blaring alarm clock at 5 am while your dear spouse snores on for 2 more hours?
In my short four years in this profession, I have decided that there are several facets of teaching.
THE GOOD:
1. Meeting a wonderful group of children who automatically love you on the first day of school each year.
2. School supplies
3. Summer vacation
4. Christmas vacation
5. Valentine's day spent with smiling little faces and hugs and flowers
6. The enthusiasm for life that is contagious
7. Finding new ways to teach a concept that make it stick
8. Your old students that come by just to say Hi
9. The joy of discovery when a child first finds out about multiplication, magnets attracting and repeling, or what a fossil is.
10. Looking over at a student and realizing they have been watching you, and sharing a smile with said student.
THE BAD:
1. grading papers
2. late meetings
3. Being outnumbered 20 to 1
4. Fear that you are not doing a good job & no one is learning anything (after grading said papers)
5. Waking up on Wednsday morning and feeling like you have already worked 5 1/2 days.
THE UGLY:
1. Angry parents
2. Angry principals
3. Standardized Testing
4. Budget Cuts
5. More & more demands
6. Being screamed at by an 8 year old.
7. Being evaluated by your class standardized test scores and not your hard work & progress. (when said children did not pass last year's test to begin with)
8. Being scrutinized by the entire country for "what is wrong with our school system" when we never got to make any of the decisions anyway.
9. Switching to a pay scale that says I am already paid too high and my salary should be based on student performance.
10. Being told that $30 K a year is being paid too high. Tell that to my 3 kids.
So that is basically in a nutshell what it is like to do my job. Think you could take it? Think you could take it and LIKE it? I do. And there is nothing else I would rather do with my life.
