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| More wretched words have never been spoken. |
For many of us it's a remind that though we've been away from our students for a few months--2 in my case this year--we've still been working. Taking classes, rewriting the aforementioned curriculum, learning new and innovative ways to expand our students minds as they summarily ignore us, these are what most of us do over "summer break."
And we deserve a break, I mean a serious break. I know this happens everywhere, but imagine being told your company found a groundbreaking new way to do business, like totally revolutionary. You're skeptical, but eventually buy in, bring others around, and lead the way to the future, only to be told that yeah even though you've almost totally implemented everything the results aren't what people expected so the company's going in a new direction. One you're excepted to buy into immediately, but it'll work this time. Or maybe the next, or the time after. By the fourth or fifth switch, you'd be a little unenthusiastic.
That's teaching. Then you get told your performance depends on your product--the students--and how well they score on a test to determine your worth. And that there's no money to get the parts you need to fix the problem. Embrace the technology all the students use but also make sure they don't use it in the room. And even if you manage to somehow produce the most perfect results anyone's ever seen, you're going to be told to repeat it again or it didn't count. And everyone outside your job will hate you at one point or another.
Yet, year after year we come back. We brush off the old, embrace the new all the time waiting for it to be replaces, and picking up the new guys left in the trenches shell shocked from the first round. We use humor, sarcasm, and a ton of caffeine, but we come back stronger each time. We do what we need to so those products we produce can think, feel, and be rational adults some day.
I remember summer vacation ending as kid and you never get over that feeling. First day jitters, will the new kids like me, can I get all the work done, what if the lunch in the cafeteria sucks--most people leave this behind after high school. Others make a career out of it.
So remember the next time you're in Target's Back to School section, not all of the screaming and crying you hear is from the kids. Just offer that poor teacher a coffee and dry erase marker then let them know it'll be all right.
