I love my job for the most part, but that is in spite of the
constant emotional upheaval, the absolute lack of social life
(English teachers do NOTHING but grade papers, believe me),the
constant self-questioning I do about whether I have done the
best I could for the kids, the beating myself up over the occas-
ional times I have lost it and been impatient or sarcastic with
a kid, the trying to work within a system that is always reinventing
itself in an attempt to basically do the same thing, and often doing
more harm than good, and the lack of understanding of this work
that people have. I don’t think I make too much money. I make
enough for what I do and for what I bring to the job, and what
the job takes out of me.

When I read vitriol that seems to paint this
job as some simple minded work that anyone can do and has perks
beyond measure, I wonder which schools these people are talking
about. If it’s such a cake job, why do 50% of new teachers leave
before they are there for five years? When I was younger, I thought
the summer breaks were unnecessary but a nice aspect of the job; I
taught summer school for a dozen years and worked waitressing
and retail to supplement my
$12,000 a year salary. But teaching takes a toll on you. I am a
good teacher, and the years have made me better than I was,
but I do not have the stamina for this that I had
before, and I *need* the time to not have Kids in My Head for 24/7.
In the summer my hair stops falling out, my ulcer subsides, and
I can actually participate in my own life. And I work on school
stuff regularly. Good teachers never stop thinking about things that
will make their classes better, but during the school year, you are
like a hamster on a wheel, desperately trying to keep up with
the hundred-plus lives you are handed every September, lives that
come with incredible baggage that you can’t possibly know about but
are expected to be able to anticipate, and make that kid want to
learn when all he cares about is not getting killed by the
stepbrother that just got out of prison and is after him—-
or he has an attitude that you have to spend half the year
working on because his parents constantly talk about how easy
teachers have it and how overpaid you are and what stupid books
you are using in the classroom. Those are the kids who think it’s
okay to hurl insults at their teachers and resent every attempt to
be taught. When they fail their exams it is then my fault for
not being able to overcome the attitude that the parents managed
to instill. Nice job.

I sound bitter, but the thing is, I’m an
idealist. I know I could do wonderful things with all my troubled
kids if I didn’t have so damn *many* of them. I don’t have enough
time or energy to do everything this job requires and because I
have a work ethic, it exhausts me. This is why teachers want fewer
students. Teachers can’t really say anything about what would make
the schools work because somehow if we had few enough students to
really do our work right or better working conditions, people would
accuse us of having it too easy. Somehow they already do think
we have it too easy, so education will never get better, as far as
I can tell. The job is too difficult to offer less money to teachers.
Who would want to do it? They can’t get qualified teachers in the
big city schools as it is, because THE JOB IS TOO HARD for most
people. I’m not talking about affluent suburbs that produce lots of
people who discuss educational issues in the paper and on blogs.
It’s ironic that teachers in those schools get paid so much more
when they have it so mucheasier. I’m talking about rural and urban
schools where the social problems make the job of teaching a kid
near to impossible, but the districts have little money to actually
restructure families. Who’s going to go in and read to little kids
at night, show them to appreciate nature and respect science ….
this just makes me so tired.