You've Done it Again America: You've figured out a way to blame the teachers

Helpful Hints, from a Teacher Herself, to Make Your Arguments a Bit More Sound

Photo by MChe Lee on Unsplash

As I slip into almost an entire year out of my building, I can not help but ponder the continued lack of understanding that most of the trolls on the internet seem to possess towards not only the job of a teacher, but also the circumstances that inflict districts in various ways.

My school district has been virtual since March 2020. In those early days, parents and politicians alike sang our praises as they quickly realized how demanding and exhausting it is to be surrounded by their two or three bundles of joy all day, every day.

Teachers deserve to be paid more. I had no idea this was your day. Give teachers whatever they want, true miracle workers.

This was a first, America.

It was great, for a moment, to feel appreciated.

As a teacher of almost 7 years, normally speaking, its a fun game to see what sort of new issue you all will have with teachers at the beginning of a new school year. Like, the suggestion that we pack heat to work each day when we complained about the safety of schools or need for gun control. Or, how often we must threaten to strike since the common belief is that our union is evil and our teachers are lazy for demanding higher salaries (teachers make far more average a salary than you can imagine, just google your district’s pay scale, it’s public information!)

And that doesn’t even brush the surface of how challenging it is to work in an environment where your children come to school searching for an outlet to release their frustration, teenage angst, or hormones whereever they can, often resulting in verbal and physical altercations.

I hypothesize this may be why you feel slighted in this whole public education agreement. Virtual learning has now watered down a pretty big role and arguably the only role that many of you find valuable in our professional lives: the role of chaperone/guardian. You think, I give you my children for the work day, you make sure they are fed, cared for, listened to, seen, all the while freeing me up to go to work or to care for the daily family needs. Right?

While your lives have changed in a multitude of ways, you were then forced to take on that role of chaperone/guardian and perhaps the role as home tutor, in the name of public safety. That must have been jarring, being given what felt like an enormous, impossible task.

That brings me to my first tip on how to NOT argue against teachers right now.

Stop saying: Why are we doing the job they are getting paid for? I am basically homeschooling.

Let me lay it out for you. On a regular basis the teacher plays any number of the following roles on a moment to moment basis in a virtual setting: instructor, social worker, sister, mom, aunt, therapist, mentor/counselor, friend, technology support expert and now health care worker. And those are sometimes applied not just to the student, but the family members we are contacting endlessly

Per those roles, consider that the daily walk in the shoes of a teacher will include all of the following responsibilities, every single week, sometimes every single day.

Lesson Plans (warm-ups, powerpoints, activities, lesson plan outlines, assessments, you name it) and Lesson Delivery, IEP and 504 modifications for eligible students, Parent Contact via email, phone call, and texting, Comforting, Counseling and Ultimately application of the help that our distressed students need, Recommendation letters, Faculty Meetings, Professional Developments, Office Hours (often times after school), IT brainstorming and Problem solving, Completing Progress Reports, and Maintaining a Gradebook.

So, I get it. Our role as your child’s daily guardian is no longer being fulfilled. That must be frustrating. But, unless you are personally doing each and every one of the items above for over 100 students each day, please stop claiming that you are homeschooling or that you are doing the job of a teacher. You are not. You are simply helping your child with their homework.

Stop saying: How are teachers continuing to get paid for not doing their jobs? I want a tax refund! They are getting paid not to work and still collecting unemployment.

To be fair, I only read the unemployment one once in the comments section of an article on Facebook, but it felt a little misinformed to put it lightly. If you need to reread the work teachers are doing every day and essentially what your hard earned tax dollars are going towards, please reference the bold faced paragraph above.

As for unemployment, I personally did not apply for unemployment, because I never qualified for unemployment. Since, I repeat, I never stopped working. Again, comically misinformed. I’d say drop that one from your trolling rants for sure if you want some reasonable support.

Stop saying: Kids aren’t learning! You are failing a whole generation!

Truly, if you genuinely feel that it is up to teachers to either make or break entire generations, then boy oh boy, where are my millions?

Teaching is this strange profession where the weight of the world is constantly thrown on you, where you are blamed for years of systemic issues, whether it be racism, income inequality, natural disaster, mental health, or a highly, and horrifically publicized pandemic (?), and amidst that, we are blamed, shamed, and accused of not caring enough about the youth. A limitless expectation of martyrdom in the face of society’s much deeper problems.

And on to those of you who continue to outcry that the kids aren’t learning. Maybe YOUR kids aren’t learning. Maybe. But I have classrooms full of other students actually thriving in this environment. They are finally in a classroom, be it virtual or not, where they can hear the teacher, uninterrupted, deliver their detailed lessons. Where they can recieve one on one attention literally all day, and sometimes all night. Where they no longer have to bother themselves with the traumatizing reality that is being a teenager. The fear of not fitting in. Of looking different. Of speaking differently. Sometimes even the fear of their peers knowing that they actually care about their education.

And for those students that are genuinely struggling to self-motivate and regulate, from the amateur counselor and mentor over here, it is actually okay to struggle and fail, and learn, and become better for it.

Please, gain some perspective. Put a little more trust in the resilience of our youth and ride the wave with us. And please stop assuming that children aren’t learning. Believe it or not, teachers are resilient as well and through all of this we have actually been flexible enough to figure out very effective and engaging ways, to not only keep your kids occupied during the day, but decrease the “loss of learning” that you so deeply fear.

Stop Saying: My niece has been back to work since the beginning! These teachers are just lazy!

My final suggestion to you all is stop comparing the job of a teacher to other essential workers such as nurses, doctors, and grocery store employees.

There are certain jobs that can not possibly be done through a computer, which includes hands-on medical care and restocking the shelves at Trader Joes. But need I remind you how empty your highways and city streets were for almost the entirety of 2020. Or, still now, how lighter traffic is all over the United States.

Millions of people continue to work from home, because their jobs can be done from home. Home offices are now a serious tax write off and many companies do not seem to have plans to return to office any time in the near future. While the news and those “science experts” you like to reference, continue to tout the dangers of the ongoing health crisis, your argument that others are back to work, but teachers are not, is simply hypocritical.

Still to this day restaurants, gyms, movie theaters, and grocery stores are still only operating at a minimal capacity. Employees wear face shields, double masks, hazmat suits, and gloves just to complete essential services and to avoid human contact.

Yet, here we are, the teachers of America, being told that these safety measures do not count for us. Teachers, please take the bullet in order to free up my childless afternoon. Or, god forbid, demand a vaccine, which all of those other essential workers are eligible for at this point.

Believing in the validity of the pandemic, does not matter, in the discussion of demanding our return. What is important are the remaining restrictions and systems now in place all of over the country to protect the workers who continue to move the ball down the field, despite most people hiding away in their homes.

Many people claim this crisis has revealed the holes in our infrastructure, especially the holes in our education system, but I find this crisis has more solidified the ignorance of the general population in their understanding of the real, daily responsibilities and efforts of your public educators.

It is astounding how surprised you all are by the lack of equality present in that system, how our populations of color, those who make up much of our public city school districts, were the ones hit harder by a “loss of learning” when the lack of internet, learning resources such as computers, and home guardianships became the primary measure of whether a child was going to succeed in this environment or not.

If you have read this far, I am assuming you are probably a teacher yourself and are joyously reading your own feelings mirrored by my own. The teacher bashing, my fellow friend, is really yet just another testament to how vital and important we are. For all that we do, I genuinely understand why the public wants us to return to the full capacity of our role as society’s makers or breakers. Take pride in that, and don’t sweat it, cause haters are always gone hate.