Ten Truths About Teaching by Kate with a Keyboard

Dear Readers,
    Below is an insight into the jumbled brain of a teacher who either a) drinks too much coffee, b) can't sleep or c) really needs to find a new hobby.  In any event, here is are my 10 truths about teaching.  Please comment below with your truths as I would love to hear what you think!

Top Ten Teaching Truths 

(In no particular order)

1. A significant part of your job as a teacher is essentially being a surrogate parent.  This is especially true if you teach in an Elementary School as you spend more hours per day with your students than they may spend with their parents.  Thus, you are one of the most significant influences on your students during the time they spend in your classroom.  If that thought doesn’t make your heart skip a beat, I don’t know what will.  So much for wanting only two children.
2.  You will get sick.  No amount of vitamin C, Echinacea, hand sanitizer or Airborne will save you.  Your immune system will become stronger, but never strong enough to combat an epidemic of the stomach flu that will sweep through your classroom.  Just the whisper of the word “lice” will send you running to the nurse for a head check and give you an irresistible urge to scratch your head.  You will become completely freaked out when the school nurse sends home notes about impetigo, ringworm and hand, foot and mouth disease.  Some days you will seriously consider wearing a HAZMAT suit to work.
3. Teaching will both make your heart burst with joy and break it to pieces.  Sometimes this will happen in the same day or even the same hour.  Let’s face it; you work with humans, not with widgets.  The amount of emotions, problems and issues all combine to make your own emotions a hot mess.  You will experience highs and lows so often that you feel like you rode a roller coaster before you even got to bus duty.
4.  Your contributions to your profession will largely go unrecognized.  You are a superstar in your small world but that rarely translates into the larger realm.  While you may experience the thrill of being a B-List celebrity when you run into a student or parent in the local grocery store, chances are that it will only happen when you are not wearing makeup or haven't washed your hair.  The good thing is that you won’t mind the lack of formal accolades, because it is often the small things that make the most difference in a child’s life rather than the larger gestures.  You make a difference even if you don’t realize it.
5.   Teaching is political whether you like it or not.  Education and Politics are tied together.  It is the political climate that dictates how and what we teach.  It is educational policy, often crafted by non-educators, that defines how much funding schools receive, what the priorities are, and even how you are evaluated. Teachers can no longer afford to be ignorant of politics.  Know this: it is never too late to get involved and to become educated.  After all, you are an educator.  Educating yourself is of primary importance.
6. If you are in a Union, then You are the Union, not “they”.  As a member, you have a voice.  Your salary and benefits are a direct result of your bargaining unit.  Get involved and stay involved on some level.  A union is integral to a democracy and functions as such.  As part of this unit you can create change.  If you live in NYS, understand what the Triborough Amendment and Taylor Law are, what Right toWork means and how important opposition to a Constitutional Convention is to your livelihood and to your classroom.  Read up on tenure and social justice so you can throw some shade at your grumpy Uncle in the Make America Great hat at your next family gathering.
7. You will not get rich.  You will make less than your college classmates who have the same or lesser amounts of education than you do.  Taxpayers will resent your salary and you will want to hide during school budget votes and November elections. You will cringe as politicians who want votes will hold up your salary as an example of why taxes in your community are so high.  You will also spend a significant portion of your hard earned salary on your classroom.  You may own your own laminator and every color Sharpie ever made, but you sweat out the end of August every year before your first paycheck in September.
8. People will always think you only work 9 months a year.  Nothing could be further than the truth.  While school is in session from September to June (10 months - by the way), you will continue to work during the summer outside your classroom by taking hours and hours of professional development, writing curriculum, planning lessons, and preparing your classroom.  However much you work in July and August, your salary is for 10 months, not 12.  If your district pays you on a 12-month schedule, this means that you give your district an interest free loan every single week on a portion of your income.
9.   You will always feel somewhat torn between your own personal children and your school children.  When someone asks about your kids, you will ask “My birth children or my kiddos?” or something to that effect.  You will drag yourself into work sick so you can save your sick days for when your own kids are sick and then worry every moment while you are home about what is happening in your classroom.  Every child that enters your classroom will be one of your kids for life.   Your kids will grow up as a teacher’s kid and will have insight into how a classroom functions unlike their classmates.  The good thing is that your own children will grow up knowing that your heart is big enough to hold all that love, and, hopefully, so are theirs.
10. Last, but not least, Teaching is not a choice.  It is a calling.  It is a vocation.  Many teachers did not go into the profession or stay there because of the glamour, money and great schedule (sarcasm intended).  We do this because we love it, in all its beauty and all its ugliness.  15% ofteachers who enter the profession leave within 5 years and 40% of students with undergraduate degrees in education never enter the classroom at all. Those of us who stay do so because we love what we do and truly hope that we will leave the world a better place than we found it.