Day 7 - Thank a Teacher

I know it sounds cliched, but if you can read this, you REALLY should thank a teacher. Where would you be today if you didn't have teachers? Now, I know they didn't all make an impact, but somewhere in your life a teacher made a difference, even if it was just teaching you to read.

I have been an official teacher for 11 years, although I started teaching before I was out of college, so I have unofficially been in the education business for 12 1/2 years. Being a teacher was all I ever wanted to do. When I was a kid, I would make monthly bulletin boards. Since I didn't have access to the cool letters that teachers had, I made my own. (I also had my own library, but that's a story for another day.) My poor baby dolls had homework and my brother got to the point where he wouldn't play school with me anymore because I took it too seriously.

For the first 9 1/2 years of my career, I worked in high schools. I taught English, dance, and drill team (for those of you not from Texas, that is not ROTC, it is dance team). While there were some moments of satisfaction, I found it to be incredibly draining. I became a teacher to make a difference, and it seemed that by the time the students made it to me, they were already done. I think it takes an incredibly special person to really reach teenagers, and I just didn't think I was one of them. So I became a librarian and moved to elementary school kids. Wow! What a difference. For most elementary aged children, you are a god. Everything about you is magical and fantastic. Kindergarten students are so precious as they look at you with wonder in their eyes when you read to them. Second graders are amazed at how the moon moves around the earth. They tell you silly jokes, they laugh at your poor puppeteering, and they are completely honest (much to my amusement and chagrin). But I noticed that as they got older, the joy of learning left them to be replaced by eye-rolling and constant streams of "this is boring". So I stepped up to the challenge and moved up to intermediate school. 5th and 6th graders. Beautiful children who are caught between being a child and being a teenager. Smart kids who have decided that learning is too much effort and now do as little as possible. Funny kids who have a wicked sense of humor yet can be easily injured with just a word. The hormones and emotions that surround me on a daily basis could take down a lesser person, but I and my co-workers persevere. We cajole, we threaten, we bribe. We take classes that teach us how to teach better. We spend our own money so students can have the supplies they need. We mentor. We tutor. We try to find a way to reach every student - even those that are the exact opposite of us and thus the ones we understand the least.

I am proud to be a teacher. Despite what people may say or think, I believe that teachers are the ones who make the greatest impact on society. We see the future every day. We often work alone, with minimal pay, no gratitude, and constant sneers at our profession in order to make the future citizens of our country into responsible, caring, and intelligent individuals. As far as intelligent, I don't mean that all our students will be Einsteins or even college educated, but our hope is that they will have the ability to look at the world around them, gather information, and make compassionate and informed choices. Instead of just accepting what is told to them, we hope that our students will have the ability to use their cognitive abilities to form their own opinions. Ignorance breeds hatred and we as teachers fight that ignorance every day.

While public education may not be perfect, it does give opportunities to those that may not have them otherwise. Where would Oprah be without public education? Where would you be? If you're going to claim that you were home schooled, or that someone else taught you more that school ever did, I want you to consider this: where did your parents get their education? We can hammer public schools all we want, but the fact is that they are filled with many hard-working people that truly want to make a difference in a child's life. Instead of putting it down, consider the blessings that public education has brought to our country.

So, I'll get of my soap box now. But I really am serious. Think of a teacher that really made an impact on you and send them a little note letting them know. It really makes a difference to know that all our hard work really did make a difference. Unlike architects or surgeons or lawyers, we rarely get to see the end result of our efforts. Go on, send a note. You'd be surprised at how much joy it will bring both you and the recipient.