On Teaching

I love teachers.

I respect and admire teachers. They have a tough job. They have to herd 30 kids (plus or minus) for hours a day, trying to tame many different personalities into a cohesive unit that will work together to learn, play, and grow. I was teacher for a while, I get it.

I have known so many great teachers in my life. Mrs. Darcy at Fairmount Elementary. Mrs. Will, English teacher at Drake Jr. High. Mr. Moody, band teacher at Drake. Mr. Wendelin, AP English teacher at Arvada West High School. Just to name a few. These people believed in me, reached out to me, encouraged me. They shared my excitement, helped me understand new concepts. They were teachers I could go to with problems and questions of all sorts.

My Aunt Joan was a teacher. She was amazing. Well, she was an amazing person, but she was also an amazing teacher. In fact, she won Wyoming Teacher of The Year one year. Her enthusiasm for her job was evident every time she spoke of it.

Of course, there were some teachers that were not so great. My Humanistic Psychology Professor in college springs to mind. He taught exclusively from the text book and couldn’t expand or explore or defend the concepts beyond that. And I had a professor in grad school that didn’t speak to me for an entire week because I beat him at a game of cribbage.

My point is, there are good teachers and not-so-good teachers. I like giving teachers a free pass because I think they are generally under-appreciated and under-paid. I am learning, however, that I can no longer do that. Because sometimes? Sometimes kids need an advocate, and that means going into a situation without the rose colored glasses.

Most of the teachers I have known would bend over backwards to help a student who was behind. Some teachers, however, won’t always do the same for the kids who are ahead. I have known more than one student who is ahead, gets bored, and gets in trouble. They are told that it is somehow their responsibility to keep themselves busy when they are done with their work, their responsibility to not be a distraction, and their fault if they fail at these things. This leaves the student feeling like a burden and eventually tuning out of school altogether. It’s a pity and a waste. It is the teachers’ job to try to reach their students, no matter where they are on the learning curve. It is the students’ job to reach out for that, to try their best, to put in the effort.

And it is our job as parents, as adults, to be advocates for those students. No matter where or who they are. After all….the future may well depend on it.

Peace,

Kat