You Might Be A Teacher If...

Examiner column for May 21. 

    School districts are dealing with the teacher shortage projected to reach crisis levels in the next decade. Baby boomers are retiring and will continue to retire in the next fifteen years. Subsequent generations of adults are a bit more interested in the pocketbook than we were. If you doubt the truth of that statement, ask any group of college students how many of them plan to teach.

     I rest my case.

    That doesn’t mean those college students and their parents are any less altruistic, but they simply are not willing to settle for a career with few opportunities for salary advancement. I don’t feel underpaid as a teacher, but if I had taken my Ph.D. into a different career and spent more than twenty-five years there, rarely missing a meeting or a day of work, I would certainly be earning more than I do right now.

    On the other hand, I wouldn’t have been able to stay home on snow days with my children.

    That kind of thinking is why I became a teacher, and why that career has been exactly right for me. The ability to see two sides of an issue, and to come down, finally, on the side of children, means you just might be a teacher.

    Jeff Foxworthy’s humorous one-liner formula for identifying rednecks can be a useful tool in identifying potential candidates for a teaching career. Consider:

    I travel by air several times a year to teacher conferences and there are always families boarding the airplane early with their car seats, strollers, and juice drinks. You might be a teacher if the crying child in the front of an airplane makes you feel sad instead of mad.

    You are all familiar with the lengths to which teenagers stretch logic in their desperate attempts to convince parents they need extensions on their curfews or a car or a new CD or three. “Everybody’s got it” is so out of style. Now students marshal legal briefs to further their requests. “If such and such had been the case, then of course I would have been able to do without this item or favor. But that has not been the case, and therefore it is mine by right.” They rest their case.

    If the self-serving, logically flawed arguments of teenagers make you smile (or wish you could) instead of frown, you just might be a teacher.

    And let’s not forget the critical part our own histories play in a decision to devote our lives to youth and citizens of tomorrow. You might be a teacher if you can think of one teacher who helped you turn life’s corner.

    Tomorrow’s world needs today’s teachers, and that pool is growing smaller. Every one of our children has had a weak teacher along the way, one who sends home messages that are either grammatically incorrect, or hostile in tone. If you cringe at the thought of your child spending a year in a weak teacher’s classroom, you just might be a teacher.

    If you nodded your head a couple of times reading this, we need you in the teaching profession. Think about it.

Comments

[CaliforniaTeacherGuy]

I was nodding my head all the way through this post, Erica! Thanks for reminding me why I teach.

[Leila]

Even though I'm not a teacher yet, I was still nodding my head all the way through.

[Erica]

It's nice to have new commenters! Thanks. And CalTeacherGuy---I love your blog!