TEACHER

 

Remember being woke up in the morning to pick up your books and hike to school? Everyone I knew did it.

We (kids) were assigned to a school and at a certain age we walked into an unknown building, given a classroom number, found a desk and sat down all facing a blackboard and a teacher.

Before I begin, I think being a teacher is the hardest job. Everyone I knew going to college was going to be a teacher (except me). It didn’t work that way for all of them, but it was the subject of dinner parties.

I couldn’t take being in a room with 30 kids all day. There are lesson plans to do when you get home, discipline without physical punishment, emotional coping, and answering questions all day while trying to get a message across then create a test to see if the class understood and comprehended what you were saying.

School was not my favorite flavor but I guess I learned something because at the end of my term they gave me a piece of paper and sent me on my way.

Up to time of entering the classroom, kids are supposed to be taught by parents. How to walk and speak and eat and poop is the family duty before attending school. If the child can read and write and sit still, they go to the head of the class.

Then the teacher takes over.

When I was in school, we all had the same books and were taught basically the same information. History, math, science were all fundamental learning. Some of the smart kids took calculus or Latin or astral propulsion, but they were the smart kids.

The parents just expected at the end of the day, their kid would be smarter and with enough homework, not bother them. They didn’t care what was in the lesson plan or the textbook as long as their boy or girl graduated.

Today’s teaching seems to be more scrutinized. What books are available in the library? Is there any ‘sexual’ information provided? Who is filling in history gaps? The elected school board would set the restrictions.

Parents don’t seem to want certain teachings. Some send their kids to parochial schools or have ‘in home’ training, but they are expensive and time consuming.

I had a lot of teachers. Most were women and most were boring. A teacher was just a Monday through Friday preacher reading from a different book.

Yet today, I feel for a ‘teacher’ being accused by parents of stuffing thoughts into their child’s brain. Is that what they are suppose to do?