Today I Saw a Teacher…”
Published in
5 min readJan 17, 2019
Jan 16
Today I saw a teacher…
- Rise from sleep at four am to get ready and go to work early.
- To get copies made for the day on paper they purchased themselves.
- To prepare a classroom for learning, to make sure they had the supplies their students needed (that the students don’t have on their own).
- To try and get the best lesson possible ready with technology, standards, and all the other demands placed on them from various sources.
- Pray that their students would make it to school free from harm, fed, in clean clothes and ready to learn.
- Make sure they were ready to give one hundred and ten percent to teach, care, comfort, be an open door and ear to those students carrying burdens they could not imagine in their worst nightmares, to be ready to keep them safe in an emergency or crisis. To be whatever their students needed that day.
- Take a deep breath and be ready to meet their students with a smile, a good morning greeting, starting the school day two hours after they arrived to make sure everything was ready to go.
Today I saw a teacher…
- Greet their students (or kiddo’s or kids) with a smile, a fist pump, a handshake, a chest pump, a hug and an ear to listen to not just the felt need but the real need of each and every individual student.
- students in dirty clothes, without showers, hungry because they have nothing to eat but what they will get in school that day. Students in tears or rage because of the trauma they deal with outside of school. With anger at the cruelty of the world for their young lives and experiences, the hate and pain they have embedded in them which makes it impossible for them to learn.
- Teach students who are exhausted, frustrated, angry and have given up on learning because they have no refuge, no safe place (except the school). They cannot sleep at home or maybe have no home, whose parents stopped parenting long ago.
- Give of themselves till they are poured out like a sacrifice on the altars of education, a system that cares about nothing more than a test score, an end result, a finished product, like an assembly line of education to young children who are none of the above, but are looking to a future that raises them from the despair and hopelessness of the life they live right now.
Today I saw a teacher…
- try and meet the demands of parents, administrators, districts, states and a nation who demand more but give less (more than they expect from their doctors, bankers, lawyers and even their government).
- Attempt to teach among the noise and demands of all around them to fix their child intellectually, mentally, emotionally, socially and physically.
- Attempt to meet all the needs of their students while everyone screams for more from them, or trying to reach those who don’t care at all.
- Be all these things in a world of two extremes (high demand or complete apathy).
- Try desperately to balance work and life in a world that says “You Get Two Months off Every Year,” even thought these same teachers put in the same or more hours in a year than other professionals who get only 2 weeks off.
- Go to school, training, work summer school, do tutoring and work second or even third jobs to make ends meet.
- Work eighty to one hundred hours a week doing grading, paperwork, documentation (such as Individualized education plans), progress reports, lesson plans, etc. All of this on personal time, evenings and weekends because the school day hours aren’t enough to get it all done in. All while trying to plan and have birthday parties for their own children, family time, cooking dinners and myriads of other activities
- Try to please everyone and leave themselves totally spent and empty after each and every school day.
- Try to be everything a student, parent, husband, wife, mother, father, etc…that the world demands. While hearing parents blaming them as teacher for their children’s failings and never at themselves or their children who sleep all day in the classes and do no work or behave inappropriately.
- Try to be professionals in a world that looks upon teachers with derision and disdain While teachers attempt to accomplish the noblest of callings.
Today I saw a teacher…
- Try to perform their job while breaking up fights, while students steal their belongings, while being assaulted, screamed at and cursed at by the very students they are trying to help.
- Go to court instead of school due to lawsuits by parents or charges brought against them by others.
Today I saw a teacher…
- leave school two hours later than the day demands.
- Trying to get work left from the students day caught up
- Trying to contact parents who never answer, leave messages that are never returned, or wait for parents and others to show up for conferences and meetings who never come.
- Leave school to go to a second job to make sure there is enough money to pay the bills.
- Attend after school meetings, professional development, or gather work to do at home after they have helped their own children with homework and put to bed.
- bring home a list of ten or more things to do knowing they will never get them all done that night.
Today I saw a teacher…
- Finally get into their car to head home, take a deep breath and know that only the first part of their day is over. There is still hours of work to be done. They have their own children who need their attention, there are homework, activities, conferences with their kids teachers, etc…And they will go to their students sports game or activity knowing they will be the only adult who cares enough to support that student.
- Finally pull out their schoolwork at nine or ten at night to try and get as much done as they can while fighting off sleep.
Today I saw a teacher…
- Go to bed at midnight, exhausted, knowing they did not get all accomplished that they had to do.
- Set their alarm for four am to start all over again because there is always more to do than time to do it in.
- Cry as they prayed for their students till they fell asleep. Praying that their students would be safe, fed, clean, free from abuse and trauma, not be afraid, not be in danger. Praying that they, as a teacher, would be enough for their students to see a glimmer of hope in a world that shows them only hopelessness.
Today I saw a teacher…
- Rise up early and say “ONE MORE DAY I WILL BE THEIR CHAMPION.” and do it all again.
Sincerely,
A Teacher
