TheApple

I usually say, "those who don't teach, shouldn't try to!" with a teeth-melting smile...  

My biggest problem with being stereo-typed is that my friends and family don't like to write to me... they could be embarrassed of their writing skills; penmanship, grammar, spelling, etc.   Heck, I tell them that I don't give a flying hoot, I just want to hear from them.... but, they still seem to see me as "teacher" (probably the nightmare flashbacks of the teacher with the ruler in her hand making them do homework!)..and they think I'll be all judgemental on them... sheece!   But, that's the little-box they put me into, and I feel stuck there.

Thanks for this topic ~ good one!

 OK, teaching's hard, probably harder than most other jobs. But, on the other hand, if you love doing it, well, the hard really isn't all that hard, if you get what I mean.

I'd so much rather be doing a really hard job that I truly love than doing an really easy job that I don't like.

Mom's secret of success:

1. Discover what it is you love to do.

2. Find someone who'll pay you to do it.

 Dear dhastings,

Kind of a backhanded compliment, really.  After all, we teachers know EVERYTHING.

You speak about teaching the grade school child.  I teach early childhood. I now teach in a preschool but when I began teching. I worked in a child development center., teaching three and four year olds.  My day started atarted at 8;00 am and ended at 5:00 pm. I ate with children, I prepared my lessons with the children while the napped ( or attempted to nap),  and then cleaned up the room to start the again. 

The work is teaching, the is also enables the parents to work at their non teaching jobs.  Now I have been doing this work for 20 years and I enjoy teaching young children. I also know it is stressfull, emotional, and physical. It is also joyful, heartwarming, creative, and fun to see such growth daily.

It also sad when parents don't understand what you do,because we are not the teach, read, project , test , retest of the profession.

I do enjoy my time off and my days at work.

Lucy pre school of Two and Three year old ESL children

 When you think about it, no one would become anything without teachers to teach them, so I don't get why people don't think higher of teachers!

Nearly all of my life I have been teachhing somebody something.  When it's in you, it's in you.

My mother was a day care teacher.  She was one of the first wave of the "Day Care 100" project of the late 60's/early 70's.  I remember her going to school, studying, etc.  We were on public assistance, living in the projects.

I saw how Mommie, as much as she was not the "huggie kissie" person, though not cold -" ust don't  be touchin' all over me!", sensitively dealt with the kids.  It was like they were her own. 

I remember how she really got into teaching those 2, 3 and 4 year-olds.  I saw how enthusiastically she would lead singing (she had a phenomenal voice - imagine Anita Baker as a soprano).  Best of all, I saw how the children responded to her so readily.  Then years later, in the 90's, those 2, 3, and 4 year-olds would call her out on the street as teens and twenty-somethings, and for a moment would become those 2,3 and 4 year-olds again.  I surely hope they were not waiting for her to assist them with their "accidents".  In fact it was during this time that I learned that an accident had something to do with dry clothing becoming wet, and clean underwear becoming, well, not-so-clean.

Anyway at some point this inspired me.  I wanted to have the rapport she had with her students.  I wanted to be able to live knowing that I had affected my community by giving our next leaders and architects and police officers and clerks and secretaries and entrepreneurs skills or habits or knowledge that would improve not only them, but their communities, their families and their progeny.

I "officially" taught for the first time when I was 19 or 20.  I was working with an innovative music teaching program that traveled from school to school.   I prepared by going to the local public library and spending hours pulling down books on teaching my subject.  One of the first books I opened said that sometimes a teacher may only be one lesson ahead of her students as a teacher, but she must know her lesson material well enough to thoroughly teach that lesson.  This comforted me, because while I was very good at what I did as a musician, I had never taught it. 

I am sorry, I went way beyond the question.  Isn't that just like a ... .

Perhaps from watching my mother, maybe from the preparations for the music experience, possibly the work that I put into preparation for sermons both when I was a senior pastor and now as a guest on occasion, more than likely all of the above and more, I have always appreciated the hard work that goes into simply PREPARING to bring a lesson, let alone TEACHING it.  I have always seen teaching as no less difficult than any day I have spent working in any office - even as a real estate professional (for which I am a teacher as well).

I am now back in school to finish preparation, aborted nearly 30 years ago, to serve in the classroom.  I hope to finish by June, 2011.

RealtyPro:  I agree.  

 As a child I had desks set-up in our garage and all the neighborhood kids would come there to 'play school'...I was the teacher, of course. 

Later in life, whatever profession I found myself in (prior to getting my degree, certification, licensure, etc) I found myself teaching. 

However, there were no professional "teachers" in my young life.  I'm the first in our family to graduate college. 

In college the lessons, presentations, leadership qualities were never an obstacle.  I just followed my instincts.  I'm a natural-born teacher; one who loved school for the wide array of information it made available to me.

There's one in every bunch. Individuals that ask  for help then cringe with disbelief if I don't know the answer. (I don't know every answer that's why I google at least I can find the answer). They didn't know either, that's why they're asking me. And they seem to forget all the other times I knew the answer.

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Once upon a time, fresh out of computer repair, I worked along side the school tech. Teachers  who remember that are always bombarding me with repair type questions. I often remind them that I no longer solve hardware problems I am on the software side now. I barely remember some of that stuff. But sometimes, when the tech is out, my boss sends me to other teacher's classrooms to see if I can "fix" a problem. In that instance, it doesn't matter...hardware or software I do every thing in my power to fix it (I love google) just to impress him...then the cycle continues.  It really is a vicious cycle.

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Then there's the "I know how to do this, just help me to remember" person. They don't know. They've never done it, but they want your help without looking like they need it. You explain it, they insist that they can "take it from here", they do it wrong, then blame you.

You can't win for losing -Mom

Mr. Crisp,

    I know just what you mean about the way people look at you...when I tell people that I went to college for 14 years, they look at me strangely, too.  I loved school.  I miss the group conversations, the academic energy that flows, and  the mental challenge presented by the teachers.  I'd go back now if I could afford it!  Have a delicious summer!

I think teaching is a calling and you must truly like children.  I think teachers should be paid more than what the world thinks of them.  However, I think they must prove that they are worthy of pay.  Let see I think of teaching profession the same way i do as the medical profession.  However, it should be at a higher degree...why, because who taught Micheal Jordan, who taught Warren Buffett, Who taught Oprah Winfrey,  who educated the Doctor?  No one but a teacher.  A teacher is many things to many people she is a social worker, she is a mother, she is a disciplinarinian, she is a doctor, she is a counselor, she is a listener, she can also be a target for the upper school board to attack when test scores are down.

Yet, I am not a teacher and I am aspiring to become one...However, i have encounter in primary school, secondary school, and college Good Teachers, Great Teacher, and just plain awful teacher.....What set a Good or Great teacher from the rest networking skills, dedication to her learning new ways to inspire children to want to learn.  Making the lesson hands on and sometimes lecturing about roles in society.  What makes a teacher awful....I have my education and you have to get yours...just happy with getting a pay check.  Teachers who do not feel they have a voice.....teacher who are happy with not trying to make the school better waiting on retirement.

I think the role that teacher have in life is the inital way students are going to perceive the world....I remember Ms. Shackleford...she was a teacher that taught me poems like "If" or Don't quit.....I had to memorize it and know it in her Social Studies class....I thought she was completely crazy....Yet, it is inside of me to this day.  It is hard to become a teacher so the ones who go above and beyond make a difference

I've often wished that the news documentary show, "48 Hours" would follow the life of a real teacher so the general public could get an authentic glimpse into the daily demands of professional teachers.  Too many people see only the obvious: that we are off in the summer and we work with children.  They don't come inside the school building to watch teachers in action, to observe the myriad of challenges or the incredible obstacles we face.

I address several misconceptions about the teaching profession in my blog post, http://edutwist.com/elin/2009/03/myths-about-teaching/ ; One of them is that teaching is easy because it's a lot like babysitting... and what's hard about babysitting? Being adults, most critics forget that children are not an easy audience; their attention and personal needs are slippery and unpredictable, and we teach 20-30 at a time for several hours at a time. And we aren't just sitting with them; we aren't entertaining them -- we're engaging them in lessons to learn material that they often have no desire to learn but that society says they must.  It takes skill, insight, expert content knowledge, and strategic planning (outside of classroom hours)  to develop lessons and materials that will not only teach a topic but also make it personally relevant and interesting to a child who would rather be playing. We are experts at exciting the curiosity and at making connections. Many people in the corporate "real" world of careers would not be able to do this successfully.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to misunderstandings about the teaching profession. Sit down and talk with me sometime if you're a critic of teachers. Come into my world for a day or a week.  You'll feel exhaustion and be humbled, because you will see that in spite of its diffiicult challenges, teaching offers intrinsic, long-lasting rewards. It promotes humanity rather than profits.  It's all worth it.