Teachers are
people who have chosen the profession of (hopefully) imparting knowledge, creating understanding, assisting in application of the knowledge and understanding, and assisting & motivating kids to attain higher-level thinking skills.
Most of those I know are caring, dedicated and
work 11 months a year (yes, during the summer) and 7 days a week, 12 hours a day M-F during the school year.
Of course, as with any profession, you have lame-os and deadbeats.
The pay sucks if you work in one of the "Education? Why Bother?" states, like
Arizona.
But, watching kids actually try to learn, take standardized
test after
test (thank you GWBush) and still maintain a sense of humor and enthusiasm makes it worthwhile.
On the downside:
Parents who are less than useless, kids who are totally unmotivated and chose to destroy the learning environment and the administration that supports that (thankfully not all administrators are like that) for fear of Karla's mom getting angry that Karla won't be moving to 8th grade... Yes, in Arizona if the
kid fails every class and misses 85 days of
school, the parent can override the teachers' recommendations to retain the kid.
Julio wrote a letter that said, "If it weren't for my teachers, I'd think all adults were drug addicts and losers."
Pretty cool! My teachers lined up on the last day of
school so we could throw pies in their faces!
I have had some astoundingly
good teachers and some abysmally
bad teachers.
The contributors for some of these "teachers" entries really should have been paying attention to their teachers, then wouldn't look like such asswipes by their horrid use of language and spelling skills which testify to their dumbfuckery.
