We teachers…. we are a rugged group.  We work all day in near isolation with a roomful of children who, only by the grace of their own decency choose to stay in their seats.  At primary they are very sweet and very needy.  Filling that need with our attention is one of the best parts.

No one knows what we do, except other teachers. Yet we hardly get a chance to talk to each other.  When we do, we have so much to bi….. complain…. about… that we hardly know where to start.  It’s easy to feel frustrated and overwhelmed.  So there’s not one to talk to, and then, the hardest part, projecting the image that… life is wonderful!  I love having hours of papers to grade after the bell rings or parent who remains defensive and angry over the tiniest comment even when I so obviously (because I tell them) like their child.  Besides when we do get the chance to talk together either:  1) It degenerates into negativity.  2)  There is usually a task which needs attention like a field trip.  Often both!   Your team members, they’re your buddies but the demands of teaching and the need to appear in control and perfect at all times and tinge those relationships too.

So I’m writing this.  Just to get my concerns in the open. (anonymously)  So perhaps, you won’t feel you are the only teacher in the world that ever struggled with things.  Everyone else is just… lying.  Not overtly, just through omission. Between classes we admit to each other, “Wow, today is hard.” or “My class is awful today.”  (just before a major holiday).  But we seldom talk specifics.   That’s with some reason which is explained below.

So you don’t get the idea that I’m a terribly negative dark person I want to go on record as very impressed with the colorful blogs of teachers who have such great ideas and make it seem like teaching is fun and easy all the time.  I am just like that 90% of the time, upbeat, smiling and annoyingly cheerful.  I admire those bloggers and I wish I could be like them.  Still, I figure that space is pretty much filled.  Someone needs to talk about the harder side of teaching, if nothing, so you just don’t feel it’s just you because as classroom teachers, we are not allowed to have long faces, ever. 😉

Teaching is often fun and sometimes easy, but all the time?  No, that’s just what we want parents to think.  We know that we are expected to be poised, in control, happy and to able to make even the most dull tedious subject enthralling.

But teaching book knowledge, that’s just the beginning of our jobs.  We are the number one profession talking with children. So any time society has a problem some bright person in a think tank says, “Hey, hand that problem to the teachers!   They’ll fix it!  They’re amazing.  So we also are expected to heal all these major societal problems:

1. Cultural awareness and tolerance (why not love?) of other ethnicities.
   2. Bullying & meanness in general.
   3. Lack of exercise.
   4. Personal hygiene. 

And that is just the short list!   You, dear reader, can probably offer a dozen more things to this list such as appreciation of art,  music, science, character education, love of reading, writing, knowledge, to name but a few more.

oh… and after that…

5. Educate each child to the highest international standards despite social conditions at home that are beyond our control so well they can pass tests designed to trick them.  All that despite living in a get rich quick culture that pays only lip service to the value of education (only recently required since the death of the industrial sector and blue collar labor as a certain career path) and where teachers are minimally respected compared to other cultures.  Here, children are almost expected to act out.  Defying authority is a part of our national heritage.

And what do we do?  We sigh and say… “SURE!!!  Bring them on!”  We’re teachers!!!  We love it!  We are filled with life and love and great ideas.    We are culturally aware healthy people who make great role models.  No problem!   And we’ll teach all of that with just a marker and a whiteboard.

Below is a list of the chief things I’d like to ‘discuss’ (okay, gripe about) because, again, there is so much hesitation for we teachers to even admit that our jobs are hard.

Why?

Because we are constantly judged by by parents and even colleagues!  We have the most public jobs there are outside of actual celebrities.  So we pretend that we never raise our voices in the shared fiction that children are always perfectly compliant and we are perfectly in control of their behavior.  (For the most part, we really don’t shout.)  There’s enormous pressure to appear sweet and unruffled at all times.  It’s just part of the job. It’s show biz!  If we don’t we are judged, even by colleagues who know the truth.

True story:  There was one teacher, years ago, widely regarded as a ‘mean teacher’ by the children who once chided me for letting a bit of frustration with my class show outside my door in my tone of voice.  I couldn’t believe the hypocrisy!  The message I took, “Be as mean as you want just don’t let anyone know.”   Sigh….

But with live in a world that’s always filled with judgement despite that little ‘judge not” admonition in the Bible. People love judging for that quick easy rush of superiority they get to feel.   Parents, get sick of being judged too.  The less kind ones are happy to have someone else to criticize as they have been by other parents, acquaintances, and sometimes total strangers on how they should be doing their job.  Ira Glass (of This American Life) said it best, “Criticizing parenting is an American pastime.”   Everyone knows, even those without children, the ‘proper’ way to raise and educate a child.

I’m not condemning parents.  They have the hardest job in the world that makes our jobs possible.  They need as much understanding as we do and I love to offer it.  But even when I assure them they are doing fine and their child is wonderful, they can still act defensive.  They are under tremendous pressure, mostly from themselves to produce a ‘perfect’ child.  (How is that possible when the very definition of human means includes being imperfect?)  So they often pass that along that pressure to us.

Life would be much easier if people admitted they were humans and not gods.  That’s another reason for this blog.

We pretend too that it is always easy – we have to.  It’s expected.  We’re all about rainbows, sunshine, friendship, bright colors and we end all our sentences with exclamation points!  It’s not a bad thing, it’s who we are!   Sometimes, for me at least… it’s too much.  (Me who repainted his window welcome sign in Tempera rainbow colors.) When you walk into a primary teaching store don’t you get sick of seeing everything in bright primary colors?  Can’t we at least get some other secondary colors?  Some orange or some purple?   It can be downright nauseating at times.  There must be even kids in the world thinking, “Does every thing HAVE to be bright red, green, blue, or yellow?  Can’t we have… pastels?????”  That’s primary world where we live. (No, those are for babies.) I’m not at war with it.  I just want to talk about it.

So that ‘always easy’ attitude and the decoration schemes spill over onto blogs.   If you’ve looked you’ve seen them:

Happiness and Butterflies and Flowers and Sweetness and Light in ___ grade

And it’s always an alliterative title.   I’d say more but I really don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. They have helped a lot of teachers and they produce great curriculum!

I just can’t do it myself.  I have to be more real.  It’s just my style.  Even though at first I tried to find a blog design that had those elements (Rainbows and butterflies etc.).   Maybe I’m just jealous because I can’t manage that level of enthusiasm in my blog.  I aim to be a bit different., honest but not cynical.  I save cynicism for humor when there is nothing left to do but laugh.  It’s not a message as much as a coping mechanism.

So, this blog is about let my hair down and telling it like it is without getting caught up in negativity.   Sure teaching is challenging.  But the thing that makes it hardest is pretending it’s all a walk in the park. I get that parents need that.  They want to believe in us.  So it’s a facade.  We are one of the few professions remaining in which titles are still used and expected – even if it’s just Mrs. Ms. or Mr.  Everyone else goes by first names now, even lawyers.   Parents want to put us on a pedestal.  They are hesitant to call me by my first name – they want me to be so important and above them that I don’t use my first name.  (A thing I hate because it stops them from seeing me as just another concerned human being.)

We are expected to be ‘perfect beings’  (like the teacher in the final episode of Parks & Rec). So that’s the environment:  Perfect children raised by perfect parent and taught by a perfect teacher.  Arrrgh!   To the extent we try to live up to that unrealistic view we destroy honest communication and set ourselves up for disappointment. How are we going to help each other if we are not allowed to admit that the job can be difficult and that children can be nearly impossible at times?

But, it’s never spoken of so we can’t even criticize those assumptions.  I do, at Back-to-School night admit that I am just human.   Parents, do not want to hear that.  It’s probably not politic.   But there are pitfalls in overselling ourselves.

When I do talk with my team I like to be honest with them when, usually just when speaking one to one.  Even in a group of four there is pressure to pretend.  I admit that I forget names of parents in the two years between having them and their 2nd or 3rd child.  Or that collecting everyone’s papers and holding students accountable for their work is easily the hardest part of the job.   One thing I’ve realized if I am finding a particular part of teaching difficult… it’s almost for certain that my colleagues have the exact same problems.  They think it’s only them.

We teachers acquire this reputation as superhumans with an innate ability to control children because we seem to bend them to our will so easily.  When we can get children to work (or pretend to work) for up to six hours while their parents struggle to get them to just complete a bit of homework or a simple chore.  We have impressive hard-learned management skills.    But we know the truth.  One reason children do the work because they are at school and that’s the expectation.  Also our class invariably has some superfocused kids who wouldn’t dream of not doing what they were told.  Unlike those on the other side of the behavior range.  Public authority is new and scary, and defying it seems a bad idea.  They are used to upset parents, but upset teachers or principals, that’s scary.  Most children, but by no means all,  save testing of limits for home where it is safe.   But really, students are not that much better for us.  They’re as defiant, just not openly.  On Monday morning, kids don’t want to work any more than adults do.  They’re human!   Still it’s nearly impossible to not buy into the image of “Teacher as Superhero”.  (Hey, there’s my name for a blog if this doesn’t work out!  2nd grade Superheros!  It’s alliterative. It’s positive.  It’s probably taken by someone.)

I just didn’t want to write yet another blog that perpetuates the above notion.   Most blogs it seems are written with the aim of celebrity and marketing education products.  (full disclosure: I do sell curriculum on TpT but it’s going to be rarely mentioned because my style as a teacher, intensive & rigorous with sufficient but minimal cuteness, is not so common.)  This blog exists because because I agree with the Amy character Amy in Pitch Perfect – “I feel that if you’re not really living if you’re not being entirely honest.”  (or words to that effect)    Our inherent inherent dignity as caring people should be sufficient.  There is nothing gained by never admitting weakness or that, “Sometimes this job is hard as hell.”  That we get though the days smiling, just that itself some days is heroic.

Still, it’s amazing how screwed up people’s thinking gets in this world. Everyone gets caught up with assumptions similar to these in other areas. A quote I loved once on Tumblr:   “What screws us up the most is the picture in our heads of how it is supposed to be.”  It’s true, it really gets in the way of coming to terms with what is so, because that is the path to enlightenment.  I think it’s why so many teachers burn out. (and why we all need summer to recharge)

It we can cut through all the B.S. everything is a lot more simple and easy to manage.
So here is the list I’ve been promising

Things that REALLY need ‘discussion’ (griping).

1. FADS in education.   (no profession, no human undertaking is more fraught with fashionable ideas that are seldom put into perspective than education.  Consider:  ‘whole language’, manipulatives, standards, standardized testing, No Child Left Behind, PLCs, & Common Core, online databases.)  It seems there is a new one every two years or so.  Each has a good premise which is then blown way out of proportion by educators seeking “the answer” to ‘fixing’ our schools. Invariably the fad is focused on to the exclusion of all other good educational practices.
2. PLCs.  Professional Learning Communities.  (one of those fads)  A great idea with many flaws and poorly executed by teachers and districts.   Way too much focus on data, as if children were little packets of information and test scores
   a precise and exacting measure of what they have learned when it’s simply a poorly written question.  How many times did you know an answer to a test in school but missed the question?  Few test makers even allow for the fact that children can only store four things in short term memory so they simply get confused.
3. Technology  (Why can’t they just call them computers, or at least  ‘information technology’? ) – I mean a pencil is technology.  A VCR is technology.  There will be computers in desks or at least one per desk before I retire, I’m almost certain.
4. Parents.  Who doesn’t have a story about a crazy parent?  They mean well, but raising children drives you mad. Their child is only all its parents hopes & dreams, a direct reflection themselves and their most precious thing.  The emotional stakes couldn’t possibly be higher!  So, no problem.   Being objective is a piece of cake for them, right?  (If this blog had emojis this sentence would be followed by a dozen ‘laughing so hard it draws tears’ icons)
5. Administrators.  No.. excuse me.. “Educators.”   (Alas, the further you get away from the classroom the less realistic the expectations and the more political the job.)  Still, as much as principals can make our lives hell, who in their right minds would take that job?  Crazy parents, crazy teachers and crazy kids.   Just because I get their job is hard, doesn’t mean I can’t complain.
6. Students and where they are on the “FOCUSED………………………….. NONFOCUSED” range of behavior.   Some kids naturally behave and some kids just don’t.   That difference is there in all of us, as children, as adults.  It has to do with authority and one’s comfort level living inside or out of the rules of authority we create for one another.
7. Curriculum companies …and the education market.  There’s billions at stake and curriculum is a ‘racket’    This has been obvious since my very first year.
8. Standardized testing & common core.  This really belongs with the topic above, but I’d like a nice list of 10 topics for starters.
9. Colleagues – Can’t we just all get along?
10. Actual GOOD ideas for teaching  I have tons of good ideas.  We all do!  This is what PLCs should be about, but aren’t most of the time.  For example, a great mnemonics is priceless thing. They work!   My biggest struggle in the past few years has been getting teachers to share what works for them.  Some out of false modesty and others, flat out, don’t wish to help others to make themselves look better.

Still, no one needs a blog that is all negative.  That is not my intention.  There are many good things to share too:

The best parts of teaching.
Read aloud (one of my favorite things to do as a teacher)
Math,   Writing  English    PE    Art.

I will never understand teachers who don’t want to share what works for them.  (which is what PLCs are supposed to be about) I mean… we are teachers right?

I define a teacher as someone with a burning desire to share what is right and true.  Nothing is greater than the feeling of understanding.  There is power and enlightenment in knowing the truth.  By truth I mean,  what we can agree upon as the state of reality.  (Wow, that sounded quite philosophical.)  However, we can only do that by being honest with each other.   

Cheerfully yours,
Mr. Scott
p.s. Oh,  and if you do need some curriculum, well, stick around.  I’m sure I will get around to mentioning that too.