One for All, and No One for the Teacher

I'm a second year teacher. I've made my way around the block once and survived and am now on to round two. I wonder how I got here, and yet I know exactly how.

I graduated high school when I was 17. I graduated college with a 3.6 when I was 20, having worked 20 hours every semester but my first, and finished my student teaching and secured a teaching job when I was 21. Now I'm 23 and have a solid foothold in my career of choice. I am clearly a 'go-getter' type of person. I make goals for myself and I achieve them. I am an, albeit young, but responsible adult.

So why am I treated like a child who can't be trusted because I am a teacher?

Want to know what we're faced with right now? A new standardized test that we have virtually no information about, other than it's the basis of our merit pay. That's right folks, I'll make money based on how well my students do. Because the $1,800 a month I take home isn't enough of a slap in the face already. I have tried to research the test we're giving and you know what I find? Websites that have 'information coming soon' and FAQ sheets with one question on them. Awesome. We're taking the test this spring. So we have less than 180 days to teach everything in the common core. Not hard, right? Check them out online, at least that website is complete.

I'm being punished for something I have never done wrong. And I'm not the only teacher in this boat. I am not one that does the same thing year to year. I've been teaching one year and a three weeks and I have already completely reworked this entire year. I have taught the same thing twice ever. In fact I intend to teach the same thing the same way again; it's poetry and I made a boss, week long unit. It's effective and for the first time poetry is an outlet and a type of therapy rather than a stupid rhyming assignment. So yeah, when it's awesome, I'm going to keep teaching it.

Oh wait, not good enough. Cut funding, parents down our throats, administration stretched too thin and what feels like everyone blaming teachers for who even knows what anymore.

I am infuriated that we live in a world were a teacher can't see old students without having to wonder if a rumor is going to get started or without having to take precautions to make sure that nothing looks fishy. Because you know what that student is there for?

To tell me thank you.

Not to meet up. Not to get my phone number. Not to talk about inappropriate things. Not to do anything you hear about in the news.

I let them come see me after they are no longer at my school because it is the only time that I get to see the outcome of what I spent hours and days and months hoping would happen. It's the only time that it will ever come back to me. These kids carry a part of me. I shared horribly embarrassing high school love poetry I wrote with them. I'm a part of them. I saw them almost everyday of their awkward stage and I still accept and love them (in a completely platonic way, you creep), and that means something.

I am not an idiot and my record is clean. I love seeing my students succeed, and I hate knowing that there have been enough twisted minds out there and enough bad situations that that is hardly a reality anyway. I can barely have students in my classroom after school without administrators checking to make sure everything is ok. It is. They needed help with their homework. Or they're telling me that they've cleaned up their act. That they have a great boyfriend now and that things are going well, even though in their mixed up 9th grade year it never seemed like that would happen.

'You were right, it gets better'.

And when all we hear is how we're not good enough, it's those moments that keep us going.

But that's not all.

Why am I teaching both Language Arts and common sense? Why am I parenting these kids? Why am I the one reminding them to be decent to each other. Why do the students open up to me and tell me their struggles and triumphs, sharing their insecurities and tears. Why does the state insist on treating educators as lazy inferiors? Because all the teachers I know are kicking their trash to be the best that they can and we get rewarded by being told that we aren't good enough.

So next time you're having a hard day at work, be grateful that the greater part of the population doesn't pretend like they know how to do your job, with the people calling shots not having stepped foot in a classroom past high school graduation.

And then thank a teacher. It means more to us than you know.