Teachers are the Future

"To the ends of the earth would you follow me
There's a world that was meant for our eyes to see"
                                                           Lord Huron
Here's a little song for you:
Ends of the Earth, by Lord Huron

Many of my friends are teachers, and today they return to work.  This year is different for them because they are returning two weeks earlier than usual.  People who do not teach cannot seem to understand what the big deal is since they, along with the rest of the working population, don't get "three months off" every summer.  Let me clear things up a bit.  School often ends around mid-June, and teachers return at the end of August, so their "time off" is 2 1/2 months, not 3.  Yes, this is amazing and wonderful, and a force not to be reckoned with.  You will not hear a teacher complain that she only gets 10 months off!  There are on average, 22 working days per month, so this averages out to about 56 days off.  Wow!  That's really incredible.  But when you consider that this is not paid leave, it seems less impressive.  In the United States, on average, workers receive fewer paid annual leave days (12) than those in other countries.  In Sweden, for example, workers on average, receive 33 paid vacation days per year.  Now that's incredible.  To the ill-informed American, a job that gives 56 days off in the summer does seem like quite the gig to have.

What people don't seem to realize is that most teachers (the dedicated ones, and sometimes the not so dedicated ones) work during the summer.  For example, a friend of mine recently attended a four-day conference from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and she did not get paid to do this.  The workshop was forty miles away from her home, and driving there and back each day would have put her in the middle of some of L.A.'s worst traffic, increasing the drive time from about 45 minutes to almost two hours each way.  And they would not put her in a hotel.  She was more than willing to do this to become a better teacher, but she did not get paid.  Nor did she receive pay for the two-hours + of work she did each night on her computer preparing for the school year, creating new programs, and meeting the demands of a principal who was calling her twice a week with assignments for her to complete.  This was the work I observed my friend doing while she was staying at my house to avoid the nasty drive.  She works during the summer!  Her days are not filled with thoughts of, "Well, what shall I do today since I am free and on vacation!?"  There is some of that, sure, but she has many responsibilities in her teaching job, and the summer provides student-free time to get some things done, to improve the system, and to get ready, always, for yet another school year.  And this is what I hear from many of my friends who are teachers.  There are those who choose not to work because they are not getting paid.  But mostly, I think teachers are hard-working, conscientious beings who want to do a good job.  This was the category I fell into.  I went to workshops, wrote curriculum, met with fellow teachers to align curriculum with state standards, sought out better activities and methods, read articles and books about how to improve classroom instruction and time management.  Teaching is not just a "job;" it is a career.  Most teachers will tell you that being a teacher is who they are, and it does not stop just because June 15 hit the air.

And for those who are adamant about the fact that teachers have it easy because they get to show up at 7:30 and leave at 3:00?  They do not know what they are talking about.  I can count on one hand the number of times I was able to do that in sixteen years of teaching.  While I may have been able to literally walk away from the campus at 3:00 to go to a doctor's appointment, the work day was far from over.  Teachers get to make their own after-school hours, which is one of the benefits of working in a career that provides much autonomy.  But the work is never done.  A teacher's work is like laundry.  There's always something piling up while something else is currently in the wash.  A teacher's work is never done.  And let's not forget about the psychological work it takes to be a teacher.  I might not have piled my students up in the trunk of my car, but I did take them home with me everyday.  I worried about the student whose sister had just been beaten by her boyfriend, the one who had a miscarriage at 3 months, the one whose lung collapsed the week before the AP exam, the one who missed school often because he had to take care of his younger siblings.  And I carried the weight of how I could be a better teacher for them--a better, positive force in their lives--on my shoulders.  That kind of weight seeps into your bones and does not fall away from you even as you rest your head on an 800-thread count pillowcase.

It was my job to be the best I could be because I knew, at the very least, those kids were counting on me.  So when it came time to work into the night to perfect a lesson, I thought of them.  When it came time to write meaningful comments on 200 essays, I thought of them.  When it came time to do the hard thing because it was the right thing, and it would have just been so easy to give up, I thought of them.  My students were the reason I did everything I did as a teacher.  (I'm sure my Type-A personality might have had just a little bit to do with it!), but even then, my students were the ones I thought about.  And what I came to realize was that the entire time I was trying to make them better, something surprising happened:  They made me better.  And there's not any amount of money, nor is there any number of vacation days in the world (paid or not) that I would rather have.

This is a nod to all my friends who teach.  Keep fighting the good fight.  Keeping filling your world with the passion that makes you great.  Your students will appreciate you for it, and society is better because of it.  Keep on keeping on, even when your job seems so frustrating and difficult that you think you just can't do another thing beyond what you've already done.  Keep striving for greatness, and expect greatness from your students.  They need you.  We all do.  Have a great year, and thank you for being you.