Have you hugged a teacher lately?

[CarolU]

(maybe you should!) So much for the 3 R's

After being interviewed by the school administration, the eager teaching prospect said:

"Let me see if I've got this right. You want me to go into that room with all those kids, and fill their every waking moment with a love for learning, and I'm supposed to instill a sense of pride in their ethnicity, modify their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse and even censor their T-shirt messages and dress habits.

You want me to wage a war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, check their backpacks for weapons of mass destruction, and raise their self esteem. You want me to teach them patriotism, good citizenship, sportsmanship, fair play, how to register to vote, how to balance a checkbook, and how to apply for a job.

I am to check their heads for lice, maintain a safe environment, recognize signs of antisocial behavior, make sure all students pass the state exams, even those who don't come to school regularly or complete any of their assignments.

Plus, I am to make sure that all of the students with handicaps get an equal education regardless of the extent of their mental or physical handicap. I am to communicate regularly with the parents by letter, telephone, newsletter and report card.

All of this I am to do with just a piece of chalk, a computer, a few books, a bulletin board, a big smile AND on a starting salary that qualifies my family for food stamps!

[Minouri]

I think you all know that I'm a teacher. So I laughed at the post.

Being a teacher has given me incredible sympathy for police officers. We have a lot in common. We both get very little respect for the very important job we do. Everyone thinks they could do our job and our pay/benefits are always on the chopping block when taxes are discussed.

Most common myths about teachers...........

You have your summers off. (Teachers usually either work summer school or take classes during the summer.)

You are out everyday by 3. ( Most teachers I know either stay till 5 or bring work home with them to do in the evening.)

The pay is great. (Compared to whom? Teachers are required to have their Master's to continue teaching. How many professions require so much education and start off in the 30s?)

Hardest part of teaching...........for me.

The children with lives so horrific that they haunt you years after you taught them.

Always being in a good mood...supportive and patient.....regardless of what is going on in your home life.

Having to hear about every idiot teacher who ever taught. I've had dumb bank tellers but I don't tell every bank teller I meet about the one incompetant one I had last year.

The vomiting. Oh, yes, the vomiting gets me everytime.

The best part of teaching..........for me

The feeling you get when a child overcomes a barrier and feels success for the first time......academicly, physically, or emotionally. And knowing that you played a part in that success.

The spontaneous hugs.

The notes from parents thanking me for the extra effort I put in......however it helped their child. Knowing that what I see in the classroom carried home. No one knows the child better than the parents.....so those compliments mean the most to me.

Parent volunteers. They add so much to a classroom. I feel so lucky every year to work with dedicated parents who care about how ALL the students do. And they do it for FREE.

[pnalley]

I don't know how you teachers do it. You have my utmost respect. It must be very disheartening when you see the children with no support system at home.
You are truly helping to mold our future.

[cowboy ed]

i am on the school board here in our county. we just gave teachers a 7% pay raise. i admire them!

[Minouri]

Pnalley and cowboy ed..........you don't know how much that means to teachers. Support your teachers and you support your children. It's one big cycle.

Don't pay your teachers well........don't give them the resources they need to succeed....and it's the children who suffer in the end with less qualified teachers or subsitutes.

Last year they yanked the assistants out of our Kindergarten classes.......even our ESL classes. We lost a lot of good teachers. They went to classrooms that they could manage or neighboring districts that had more support staff and lower class sizes. I moved from ESL to mainstream. Don't know if any one of you has ever tried to take 25-30 five year olds anywhere in a line.......but when they don't speak English it's even harder. All you need is one child to get a bloody nose and all mayhem breaks loose.

Our parents and teachers fought together for the assistants to be returned .........they fought for months. Eventually we got them back but by then many staff changes had been made. No one wants to be legally responsible for so many little ones with no help. Forget about what you want us to teach them ......just the danger of losing one during a firedrill is enough to scare many new teachers right out of the K classrooms.

[Palomino_Lover]

I'm all for merit raises.. and the money can come from admin. I don't for one minute think 80% of money should go to management.

I think things got much harder when you could no longer punish kids that got out of line. I know the "board of education" worked for me.

[CarolU]

I know the "board of education" worked for me.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm, at least you're married to the right person! :razz: :D :D

I don't think that has anything to do with it...I think it started when parents started thinking it was everyone ELSE'S responsibility to raise their kids for them. Even going through those things listed in the paragraphs above, if the parents were called in to the school to address every problem their kid has/causes, the teacher could get back to teaching.

[CarolU]

Seeeeeee, and ya'll thought I was an uber liberal! ROFL

[Palomino_Lover]

And how did that all start? Liberals ruining education with social experiments starting with droping the teaching of Phoncs, then moving on to "New Math" and finally removing any respect that children have for authority. The NEA isn't helping anyone by refusing to fix the ills with education and I'm sure I've opened yet another can-o-worms.

If my comments have upset you accept my apology in advance.

[Linda Y]

They don't pay teachers, cops or firefighters enough. Not near enough.

[Minouri]

Carol,

Maybe that's why I get along so well with my parents. I DO call them from the classroom. I use my cellphone. I hate to say it but if you go through the school system very often the child is rewarded for bad behavior. I put the child on the phone with his/her parent and let them tell the parent right there what is going on.

Sure, parents get mad at me for disturbing them at work. And wow they get angry when I ask them to take a day out of work to come sit with their child. But over the last 15 years of teaching I've only met a couple that did not come around to understanding that it was in the best interest of the child.

If you tell me that I dont' understand what your child is doing in class.....I gladly invite you to sit next to him/her and explain it to me. :lol:

I had one man who used to hang up on me when I called. He'd yell at me. Tell me that it was my job to control his kid. Eventually he threw his kid's toys out and the bad classroom behavior immediately stopped. The kid told me what his father had done and I said.....wow, he must love you very much to do that for you. He really wants you to succeed.

You know, that kid turned his year around. People often think children don't want structure but it actually makes them feel secure and loved when they understand the rules.

And the dad......I called him after work to tell him how great his son was doing. He requested my class for his daughter a few years later. I took that as huge compliment.

I can deal with anger from parents. I understand the pressures of being a parent.

I also think that 99.9% of parents want the best for their child....they often either just don't understand the school system or they don't have the parenting skills to control their children.

My favorite parent was one who came on a fieldtrip and requested another child. I asked...in addition to yours? She said no.....instead of. She wanted one that would listen. I choked several times so I wouldn't laugh.

[Minouri]

Palomino lover,

You do make some good points. Phonics is back in the curriculum but do you know that up until five years ago I had to hide my phonics materials under my desk when my principal came through? Teachers were getting reprimanded in their files for getting caught teaching it. Crazy.

Math is the next wave. They push for exploration and that's fine. But there is a reason we pass our knowledge base on to the next generation and don't make them rediscover everything.

Two plus two DOES equal four. I don't care if that hurts your feelings. Try your inventive math with the bank and I bet they correct you, too.

[cowboy ed]

phonics, gotta love it. i was in a third grade classroom last november, so the bulletin board was covered with pilgrims, turkeys, etc. one child wrote that at the first thankgiving dinner, people ate turkey and vetchtabulls. :lol:

[Brigitte]

I hug my teacher..one of them anyway, lol he's my neighbor and a family friend. But yeah teachers are cool...

[CarolU]

Troy, I do agree that one of the main problems is too much tinkering with basic education, but I certainly can't point at liberals. I live in the most conservative state in the nation, and it has been since before I was born, and they have the exact same problems and goofy school programs here. My parents sent us to private school because my father didn't like 'New Math" or "Phonics," so up through 6th grade, we had a traditional education.

But that is the word...those are still EDUCATION. We can go all different directions about the best way to TEACH. But the original post was that teachers are now required to do everything BUT teach in the classroom.

Since when did it become a teacher's job to raise the children? And don't say "liberals"...because it is ALL parents across the board. I see very few parents in the U.S. take an active roll in raising and educating their children. How many don't go to PTA, don't help with homework, don't make sure homework is done, don't get their children vaccinated until forced to, don't discipline their children, don't teach them to respect other people's property...the list goes on. They now expect teachers to do all that in overcrowded classrooms at low pay.

You know when parents (or sometimes Grandparents) take an active roll in their child's education, they end up with educated children. When they instead choose to watch TV and blame the schools and the government for their child's problems, they have problem children.

[Bonnie M]

Minouri, my husband does the same thing with the cell phone. If a child is acting up, he pulls out his cell phone and asks them if they want to call their parents right then, interrupting their work day to tell them how they are acting. Most of them get really upset and decide to act better.

It is amazing what teachers put up. I don't know how he does it.

And getting off at 3?! Yeah right, he works til 6 or later, then has to come home and grade papers. I end up helping him grade a lot.

And with this whole fcat crap, the schools around here mainly focus on reading/writing, so math falls to the side. Just as long as that school can get their 'A' grade, that's all that matters.

In Hillsborough County, they have the stupidest way to teach math. It doesn't make sense at all. Up until this year, my husband teaches math differently than the way they are supposed to because it is hard for the kids to get it. But he is being forced to follow it now.

Gosh, I could go on and on about the issues he has to deal with.

[Pasogirlz]

Minouri, my husband does the same thing with the cell phone. If a child is acting up, he pulls out his cell phone and asks them if they want to call their parents right then, interrupting their work day to tell them how they are acting. Most of them get really upset and decide to act better.



:lol: I used to baby sit for some rather unruley kids. One of the first times, the youngest pitched a fit about brushing his teeth and going to bed. He was a real pill. He threatned me that he would call his parents if I didn't let him stay up for a while longer. A said, Sure, go head, in fact,....here's the phone. :twisted: Let me dial.

He was all :shock: Ummm, that's ok...I'll just tell him in the morning...and then you'll be in trouble. :evil:

Of course I told his parents all about it when they walked thru the door. They ended up asking me to babysit all the time b/c I was the only babysitter that could handle them. :lol:

[pasofantasy]

Yes, I just hugged one this evening; I'm married to one. :lol:

High school doesn't start until after 9 here. He leaves the house about 6:30. The school is only a couple miles from the house. You can see that he spends time working before the school day starts.

What has happened to society, that teachers now teach how to take tests instead of teaching the subject? My husband is teaching the subject instead and has some of the highest scores in the state.

When one considers, that everyone needs teachers to succeed in anything else, their salaries are really low in comparison. For the extra-curricular work, his supplemental pay might be less than minimum wage due to the many hours involved. The school board here tries to up the younger teachers instead of the more experienced.

[Dianne]

The lottery here advertises how many millions it has donated to Schools..the principle of Chris's school told me they have yet to see any of it. This was because of my complaint that the school was making our kids into salespeople and they actually dragged my kid out of class so that "Mr Happy" could instruct them in how to sell Christmas wrap.
I went so far as to take Becky out of public school and home schooled her because nobody would listen to her complaints of sexual harrasment in the corridors nor did she care to listen to any more boys that sat behind her in class plan how to beat up other boys or "do them in" .
I wish both my kids had teachers like you guys..especially Chris who was not diagnosed as dyslexic no matter how many times i requested he be tested. on a funny note..he is now almost 21 and i noticed the other day when he writes he starts each letter and writes it anticlockwise LOLOL..not sure if that makes sense..but he starts each letter from the opposite side we would. weird eh? bonus for the internet though..he is a great typer and his spelling has improved 10 fold.
The best teacher i ever encountered was their Kindergarten teacher...she told us parents beforehand.." I WILL hug your child" :lol: she used to read them stories and let them have turns at scratching her head while she read ..they all lived for that moment LOLOLOL plus she was their karate teacher :razz: this was a private school and was geared towards the Arts and she taught those kids broadway songs and dances to do at the annunal concerts..totally awesome! Miss Dee Dee...we love you