Easy

A student approached me this week with a burning question, "So, why is it that teachers get paid and it is the students who are doing all the work?" I choked a little on my coffee and replied, "Well, why don't you attend college for six years so you can get this cushy job, too." The student giggled a little and headed to her seat. I must confess there was a part of me that was outraged with the little rugrat but a cooler head prevailed. In theory, I should have considered it a compliment. Apparently, I make teaching look effortless.

The reality is quite different, however. This week, I cajoled 13-year-olds into using Punnett Squares to determine the probability of two heterozygous parents producing offspring with two recessive alleles. Yes, their eyes glazed over, too. I fielded the same phone call every morning with the answer, "Yes, O. is on his way now to take his pill." I made several trips to the detention room so the students in the slammer could stay caught up with their assignments. I wrestled paper from the jaws of our bedraggled copy machine flashing "misfeed" for the thousandth time. I spent my lunch minutes helping students get caught up with missing work. My co-worker and I tussled with new curriculum during every spare moment and are still staying just a few days ahead of the students. I scheduled upcoming parent-teacher conferences, answered parent e-mails, attended a before school meeting for a student, completed special education assessment forms, went to the pet store to pick up aquatic plants for a photosynthesis lab, evaluated assignments, recorded grades, chased down missing assignments, recorded grades again, calmed a student who was mad at life, handed out eighteen pencils (a slow week), and kept 110 students accountable for their academic progress. An easy job, indeed.

If it sounds like I am complaining, perhaps I am just a bit. This week our state legislature did not pass a bill that would have given teachers a raise (it failed by one vote). Teachers in our state are currently the lowest paid in the nation. We are not asking to be the highest paid, but it is time for us to be a little more competitive with our neighbors. I look at the young teachers in my building and wonder how long they will stay with us when they can drive thirty miles down the road and get a significant raise just for crossing the border. I am grateful for their commitment to the kids in our state but would not blame them for leaving.

I never went into teaching for the money. From the moments I spent as a child playing school with my younger siblings (sorry about that, dear sibs) to my first real job, it was clear that teaching was in my blood. The profession has been good to me. It has stretched me in ways I never thought possible and I have helped hundreds of kids journey through education. I have felt moments of success and I have also failed, epically, at times.

So, in answer to the young lady's question, "I promise to make it look like I'm not working, if you promise to keep on working."