They are always tired, or hungry, or both.
Sometimes they want to learn and participate. Sometimes they don't. They may need to be left alone, or they may need someone to ask them how they are and listen. They sometimes want to stir up trouble, or get into a verbal wrestling match. They can be sweet and ornery in turn. And I love them.
This age, for whatever reason, is my passion, but teaching this age is tough. Parents only contact us if they have a problem or concern about us or their student. They don't think about us until they're angry.
Being a teacher right now is tough.
Last year was my first time back in the classroom in ten years. I taught high school science for three years before deciding to stay home with my children while they were small and not yet in school. I have been out of the classroom for a while and I knew stepping back in would be a hard transition, but I had no idea what I was in for my first year back.
Last year was also the most difficult year of my teaching career. Period. It was worse than my very first year of teaching. If you have never taught in a classroom you may not understand the full weight of those statements, but if you're a teacher you do. I know how to manage a classroom. I know how to build relationships with my ornery teenagers. I know and love my content. I am not an unprepared novice, but I was wholly unprepared for teaching last year.
Last year was a battle with only one goal -- survive.
Everyone asks, "what made it so difficult?" And the answer to that is hard to pinpoint. It wasn't one thing - it was everything. The political climate, the cultural shifts that have occurred over the last ten years, the effects of the pandemic, the expectations placed on educators, and the emotional fragility of people in general.
I have never had so many students, in one school year, that struggled with some sort of mental or emotional health issue - anxiety, depression, panic attacks, etc.
The overwhelming expectations from the top down and from the outside in that every deficit that existed before and/or that was created during the pandemic should be corrected and made up for in a single semester or school year.
The expectation for students to act like the last three years didn't happen. The expectation of teachers to teach and produce results as if the last three years didn't happen. The expectation for teachers to bend to every whim of every parent and every student.
It's unrealistic. It's unfair. It's reality.
We can't please everybody, but we're asked to.
I am going into this school year with a fragile hope that it will be better, but I also have a lot of anxiety that it will be the same, or worse. I want to thrive, so that my students can as well, but there is so much that I have no control over. All I can do is show up and love my students and teach my content in the most engaging ways I know how, so that is what I will do.
I pray the overwhelming expectations of administrators and parents won't overshadow everything else, that my profession will not continue to be maligned, and that we will be given the resources we need to educate students successfully. The same students who in three or four years will be graduating into colleges and universities or joining the workforce. The next generation of adults.
If you are a supporter of education and teachers please continue your efforts and don't forget about teachers once your kids are teenagers.
If you are not a supporter please remember that you are a product of education also. We need schools. We need teachers - preferably good ones that love their job.
Don't make it harder for teachers to love the work they do. It is such important work.
