I'm doing it for the one

I have tried very hard to make this blog lighthearted and not anything too deep or serious. I especially try not to go off on all of my education and teaching philosophy stuff too often. But today is different. I've got a lot on my mind to share.

For a lot of my life I've always been pretty passive about everything. I'm not super loud about my opinions. I respect the fact that everyone thinks different things. I would rather just pretend to agree with someone rather than argue with them. And I never thought I had anything that I was very passionate about. But recently I have discovered what my passion is: teaching and education. Ask me a question about anything dealing with education and you can keep me talking for hours.

I've wanted to be a teacher basically since fifth grade. (There was a time period in middle and high school where I thought I wanted to go into journalism, but we'll ignore that.) I came to college knowing that was exactly what I wanted to do. I've loved every single experience that I've had in the classroom and I know that it's what I'm supposed to be doing.

But there are some days where as I'm sitting in class I think to myself, "What in the HELL am I getting myself into?" I wrote several months ago about how I've decided that the job of a teacher is basically like superwoman. I don't even remember what I wrote or if I got all the points across that I meant to, but basically I just wanted to say that teaching is one of the most impossible jobs out there. So many people think it's a super easy "mom" job. You get summers and holidays off. You work from what, 8-3? You play with kids all day.

Anyone who ever tells me that's what you think...you'd better watch out the next time we're standing on a mountain or a bridge or anything.

Last Friday in my social studies methods class we watched the documentary Waiting for "Superman".



Even just watching the trailer right now made me cry.

Heaven help the man I marry. He's just going to have to know that when I come home from school in tears all he can do is hold me and let me cry into his shoulder as he tells me I'm doing the best I can and that it's ok that I'm not superwoman.

The thing from watching that movie that made me the most angry is that there are so many crappy teachers out there. There are so many people who think that teaching is an easy job and that anyone can do it and they think it's an easy ride through college and then through life.

No.

Teaching is a 23/7 job. It isn't one that you check at the door as you leave every day. You are responsible for a class of children, each of which is at a different cognitive level in each subject. You have to watch those kids and know what the best thing to do for each of them is. It's your job to do everything in your power to help them succeed. You have to constantly think about what you're going to do to achieve this. Those teachers who aren't doing that need to be fired.

(Let me quickly interject and say that it's very hard to get my feelings across effectively without using profane language. You can take the liberties to imagine explicatives anywhere that you think they would be appropriate.)

Here's the rub though:
It's virtually impossible to fire a teacher.

As explained in the documentary, thanks to teacher unions, public education teachers receive tenure almost immediately. It takes college professors and other professionals years and years to prove that they deserve tenure. But public ed teachers are pretty much automatically handed a free pass to keep their job forever. Watch the movie and it'll make you angry too. My blood just boils thinking about it and I'm someone who would benefit from tenure. I think it is nothing but bull crap that a person is allowed to continue being a teacher no matter if they never leave their desk and demand that students read from the text book as they chomp their gum and read their newspaper or romance novel.

In the movie they follow several different children who are in situations where they aren't getting the best education that they deserve. Most of them are in underprivileged situations and looking at them and their lives it's hard to have any hope that they'll have the opportunity to live the life that they dream and hope for. These children are lucky in that their parents actually have a handle on what life should be about and want for their kids to have the opportunity to a good education. I think about the children out there whose parents are so messed up that they don't care and it breaks my heart. The kids in the movie all are entered in lotteries to try and get into charter and other schools where they have a chance to fantastic teachers and the opportunity to succeed.

Watching these children and their parents sit at the lottery hoping and praying and crossing their fingers that their number will be called just so they will have a chance at an education that will help them have a better life upsets me more than I think anyone can understand unless they have the same hopes and dreams as I do. Even just thinking about it again now I have tears rolling down my cheeks. I don't think it's right that this is what people should have to do to ensure a good education.

Like I've already admitted, I know I'm not superwoman. I know that I won't be able to help every single child who comes through my classroom. But if I could just help one student each year I would feel like I made a difference. If I could just let each child who comes to my classroom know that even if nobody else loves them, I do. I want for them to know that they can be whatever they want to be. They can do whatever they want to do. They just have to believe in themselves and work for it.

But then I watched that movie and saw that those children do have those hopes and dreams and are willing to work for them, but they still don't have the means to succeed because of the schools and teachers they must deal with.

So why the hell do I want to be a teacher?

I guess it's so that if nothing else, I can help the one.