Mamacita says: I posted this in 2006, but I’ve been thinking about this same thing all day so here it is again.
My blog, my rules.
Here’s the post:
Is anyone else out there lucky enough to have a job that makes you so happy that all you have to do is walk into the building and you feel the positive vibes? My days seem so short now; most days I feel as though I’ve just begun, and bingo, it’s time to go to bed again.
I get tired, yes. I am exhausted, usually, by the end of the day. But even so, I love this teaching gig with a passion I didn’t even know I was still capable of after enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous public school dealings for so long.
I think that after so long in the school systems of our country, the teachers who stay evolve a mindset that is almost enslavement. We endure schedules and treatment that no other professional would dream of enduring. We allow ourselves to be used and misused and overworked, all in the name of love for our students. What other professionals have a clientele that pretty much expects to be supported, fed, dressed, taught, and catered to in every possible way, without showing the least bit of gratitude? What other profession works so hard and gets so little support? What other job books a professional so thoroughly during the course of the day that there isn’t even time to go to the bathroom or grab a sandwich? Is there another profession so vulnerable that it is forced to endure all kinds of abuse without any recourse and often very little, if any, in-house support?
We get so used to it, we don’t even realize that there is another world out there, where people show each other respect.
We really do love the students, don’t get me wrong. But year after year in a public school kind of makes a teacher numb to any other possibility that might be out there for a person with these talents. Every year it gets worse and worse, even while we are thinking and saying things like “Next year it will be better.”
But it never is.
Next year, the classrooms are more overcrowded, there are fewer books, there are more dysfunctional families who seem to be in charge of the system, there are more duties, there are more responsibilities, there are more problems, there are more “incidents,” and there is less and less support. There is no respite. There is no discipline. The teacher’s union here stands idly by and allows a principal to schedule a teacher to the point that there isn’t even time in the course of the day to blow her nose. I am not exaggerating, either. The contract guarantees some prep time daily? We’ll count walking down the hall to fetch yet another class as break-time. We’ll count your driving time, from building to building, as your lunch. Ask any music teacher if I’m stretching the truth.
Yes, every year it’s worse. And a teacher doesn’t really know how bad it is, until that teacher walks out and tries something new.
Me, for instance.
And now, I teach every day in a building full of wonderful hardworking students and smiling administrators and friendly janitors and awesome bosses who TALK TO US AS THOUGH WE WERE EQUALS (instead of slaves) and the building resounds with humor and happiness and dedication.
Heck, even the restrooms here are superior. And there is ALWAYS toilet paper!!!!! The halls and classrooms are clean and well-maintained. Everyone behaves properly.
Always toilet paper. This amazes me.
The sad and odd thing is, I did not know how bad it actually was until I left the public schools. While I was there, I was the most loyal and hardworking and dedicated person in the building. Sure, the days seems awfully long, and sometimes the despair and frustration were so thick one could cut it with a knife, but it was my obsession, to somehow be a positive force in this not-very-positive place. I came to school at 7:00; I got home around 6:00. I was determined to make a difference, a positive difference.
But, but, there was no appreciation. There was only the expectation that if I could do that, I should be doing even more.
I couldn’t keep on.
But now? I feel positive every day. I love coming to school. All I have to do is walk into this building and I am instantly wide-awake and happy.
Sure, there are some, um, “interesting” students here, but MOST of them are pure quality. They are really students, and they mean business about learning.
I still work the long hours. But I am appreciated, and treated like the professional I’d forgotten I was, all those years.
And now, I truly believe I am helping to make a positive difference. I can see it. I can hear it.
I love my job.
The really ironic thing is that in spite of all the negative things about the public schools, I still believe that this nation’s schools are the hope of our future. There is such potential in every classroom, such stories to be told, such wondrous talent and creativity and sensitivity and music concealed behind the t-shirts and the grubby jeans and exposed underwear and defiant raising of the eyebrows and the punky hair and the chips-on-the-shoulders and the trendy slang and the stubborn glares. . . . there is poetry behind the obscenities, and magnificent scientific discoveries behind the unwillingness to conform.
It’s too bad teachers are no longer allowed to cultivate it.
Why can’t we be allowed to step back and bask in the glow of unbridled enthusiasm, and throw ourselves into helping students learn and discover and grow, grow, grow, both physically and mentally and socially and culturally and scientifically. . . . .
What happened to us as a people, as a culture, as a nation, that our idea of ‘school’ has sunk to the level of equating success with a number on a piece of paper?
I do tend to rant, don’t I. My apologies. I’m just so sorry and sad that our genuine students have to put up with the distractions and disruptions and dangers caused by others who come to school because the law makes them and who have chosen not to put any effort whatsoever in bettering themselves or fitting themselves for any kind of work and seem obsessed with not permitting anybody else to do so, either. And, that such students people are allowed to stay and continue to hinder learning and soaring in others. Sigh. So unfair.
Teachers and parents, please rise up in protest. Our precious children, our STUDENTS, are too valuable to be wasted. They have a right to be truly educated, to learn, to sing, to dance, to think, to SOAR, unhampered, and a lot of other infinitives as well. Our children’s teachers, likewise, are too valuable to be treated like indentured servants, or like anything but the educated and trained professionals that they are.
We desperately need to take back our public schools.
I miss what my former job might have been, in a perfect world.
P.S. Thank you, current students, for being awesome and serious about learning. I appreciate you more than you could ever realize.
1. Push the appropriate button. If the button is already glowing, do not push it. If you repeatedly push an already-glowing button, everybody will know what you are.
them from their old home in the East, to remind them of that home, and to help them remember that there is more to life than dirt, sweat, and hard work. Sometimes, we need a reminder, however small, that life also promises great beauty, music, hope, and a better life for our children than we can hope for, for ourselves.
Mamacita says: what’s the hurry, anyway?
Mamacita says: I was reading an article somewhere, by somebody*, that stated that no matter how old we get, there are still times when we want our mother. Our fifty-year-old mother.