Hi Jay - thanks for the timely post. My son's first official day as a teacher was today. He is teaching 7th and 8th graders in a S.T.E.M. school in Chicago's west side. I could not be more proud of him.
“I wish I could ask, ‘Why didn’t you read to your child?’ or” why aren’t you better at limiting screentime, or “‘Did you not know what parenthood involves?’”
I value teachers and teachings, regularly expressing gratitude for my kids’ teachers, and expecting my kids to do the same. But being generally inculcated with virtuous parental ambitions can’t prepare you for the specifics about the particular children you will have — and, if you’re the one bearing them, the bodily changes that may come with that.
Before childbearing, I was offered a post at Teach for America, but upon gaming out whether I could reliably get medical care in that location, and how I’d cope (especially with the long drives involved) if I couldn’t, I regretfully turned it down. And health problems that were manageable for me before childbearing became unmanageable after.
My last baby was a lockdown baby. We finally caved and got our kids screens during lockdown: we needed an electronic babysitter to get anything done around the house we were all stuck in. And yeah, screens are vampires: once you invite them in, they’re *in*, and none of my pathetic futzing around with electronic parental controls ever yielded a workable result. (ABCMouse, for example, which I had at first hoped to restrict the kids to, crashed so much on us as to be unusable.) We do still physically confiscate the screens, though not as much as we should. And reading…
The commanding personality kids actually listen to often seems out of my reach when I’m sick and exhausted, which, postpartum, is most of the time. When kids turn reading time into pillowfight time, the pillowfights often win — my efforts to get my kids to sit still and *listen* to my reading often backfire. When I say, “Do you treat your teachers this way when they read to you? I know you don’t, and shouldn’t. Your parents deserve no less respect,” my kids know I have a point. But they also don’t care much — not because they’re bad kids, but because they’re human, and disinclined, as humans are, to regard apparent nonentities.
My nonentitude was the price of bearing kids to begin with.
And I’m not special. My problems may be more medical than average, but I doubt they’re *more* than average. I worry that my parenting compares poorly to the median heroin-addicted mom’s, and sometimes it probably does (a kid who needs you can’t afford to care whether you’re passed out from drugs or from poor symptom control). But more likely, my parenting is within the realm of “most people” in “[I]f you have standards for the minimum morally acceptable parenting, and you would like humanity not to slowly go extinct, these standards must be achievable by most people.”
I fear that it will be very hard to put that genie back in the bottle after so much time has been spent by so many attacking public school teachers in the U.S., well beyond anything that may be deserved, and it is only getting worse. That said, this is a good start on heading off the tide. I particularly like your note about (public school) teachers’ having to take everyone who comes in the door.
Born into the profession. Dad was a teacher, Mom taught, both grandmothers taught, one grandfather was a principal, all of my aunts or uncles except one became or married teachers.
But, HISTORY. Far from always being a respected profession. Grandma was fired at the end of a school year so that a cheaper, inexperienced teacher could be hired for the following year. During the Great Depression, Grandpa fired female teachers who had husbands with jobs. During his first year of teaching, Dad had to borrow $10 from his father to make it through the month. Fifteen years later he had to drive 30 miles to another town to avoid being seen with a union organizer.
Like I said, I am “1980’s Guy” (hat tip Carolla…who I now fing despise because of he is a Trump apologist…I cannot and will not forgive anyone for being in communion with Heat Miser incarnate, but I parenthetically digress) and U2 War was formative like no other album on my 14 year old mind that could not stop listening to over and over (remember when you actually had to do that). Still holds up if you ask me, and will for as long as people we still be listening to Bach.
Two things I would teach the kids to be alright, first and foremost
Speaking of honor, all kids must swear an oath in every classroom across the fruited plain: A student will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those that do. In other words, a student shall love his classmate as oneself. Hmm, thanks A.C.Losers for already nipping those two great ideas out of being front and center out our public classrooms. The rest of Like a Song is very insightful, if you did not know already, give it a jingle (hat tip Dennis Miller…another Trump sellout….where have all my Republican cowboys gone…oh, wait, thank God I still have you Jay to give me hope), unless you already don’t much care for 80’s rock and roll.
Anywho, back in the day my 60’s something father and great teacher would be equally dismayed as you about these trying times in public schools and the Trump phenomenon that has at least not brought his ugly mug to be placed front and hanging center…yet. Leave that to happening first in those MAGS rally’s they call church attendance in the bayou’s making like Huey Long. But like I have already lamented on another post of yours, about what my dad would have and done with cheaters, if caught in the act, he would just rip the onlooker test in half and wish the kid good luck passing the test after just getting a “zero”….I believe my dad, if still alive, would note the same thing I will about the above picture….It is a man at the front of a kids class. Last time I was in love with a teacher, 30 out of 33 of her fellow elementary teachers were women…and I distinctly remember the time they where all in communion that “Joy” (my moniker for him, for I always laughed going in such a thing with such a misnomer for just being an awful shit in the box, I mean port a potty…thank god I am not a woman) John Edwards (where is that thousand kilowatt smile now) should be our next President. Those were the good old dayz. Anywho, so long as there has been no wrecking for how utterly corrupt the teachers unions where during the Chinese Communist Corona Party man caused pandemic…when schools with names like Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln where needlessly closed down for….depending on where you lived…Like a Song, to right to be wrong, our nations kids teachers unions are still misruled as our federal government is…Trump is inbreeding his executive branch with Diehard Trumpers, just as our crudely named National Education Association already has with progressives. Teachers salaries can and only will go up as Admin goes down. But with all thing’s government, the swelling only continues. Gotta run on. Thanks for taking my rant Onward and Upward. Peace through superior mental firepower
I was an educator for 40 years - 20 years teaching mathematics to middle school students and 20 years in teacher education. And my wife is currently teaching math to 7th graders as I write this comment. Teaching has been equated to being an emergency room physician. You do not get to select what kind of patients you will treat, and you are constantly triaging between minor issues and real emergencies. Yes, there are horrible teachers, but when I work with new colleagues to the profession, I share this quote from Pat Conroy - "Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing they had taught me their larcenous skills well.”
I am glad I read "The Compost Files" by Sherri Coale. One essay dealt with her fourth grade teacher. That started an interesting exchange of messages between me and a classmate from the first grade through high school (a relationship now going on 63 years) about teachers who made us excited about learning. In her case, that led to her being a teacher. Thank you, Helen Smith and a few others.
Teachers are vitally important. I had very good ones who had a strong positive influence on me. The problem is with the ones are awful and have a lifelong job they can stay awful in. The teachers union makes it almost impossible to get rid of them. I sympathize with all teachers having to deal with kids and parents in public schools today. Very challenging.
Several of my teachers growing up made a big difference in my life, inspired me, introduced me to things I didn't know existed...to this day I am grateful to those teachers...they had a lot to do with who I am today.
My original goal was to become a teacher and teach at the college level, History most likely. But life intervened, and I never got there.
Hi Jay - thanks for the timely post. My son's first official day as a teacher was today. He is teaching 7th and 8th graders in a S.T.E.M. school in Chicago's west side. I could not be more proud of him.
“I wish I could ask, ‘Why didn’t you read to your child?’ or” why aren’t you better at limiting screentime, or “‘Did you not know what parenthood involves?’”
I value teachers and teachings, regularly expressing gratitude for my kids’ teachers, and expecting my kids to do the same. But being generally inculcated with virtuous parental ambitions can’t prepare you for the specifics about the particular children you will have — and, if you’re the one bearing them, the bodily changes that may come with that.
Before childbearing, I was offered a post at Teach for America, but upon gaming out whether I could reliably get medical care in that location, and how I’d cope (especially with the long drives involved) if I couldn’t, I regretfully turned it down. And health problems that were manageable for me before childbearing became unmanageable after.
My last baby was a lockdown baby. We finally caved and got our kids screens during lockdown: we needed an electronic babysitter to get anything done around the house we were all stuck in. And yeah, screens are vampires: once you invite them in, they’re *in*, and none of my pathetic futzing around with electronic parental controls ever yielded a workable result. (ABCMouse, for example, which I had at first hoped to restrict the kids to, crashed so much on us as to be unusable.) We do still physically confiscate the screens, though not as much as we should. And reading…
The commanding personality kids actually listen to often seems out of my reach when I’m sick and exhausted, which, postpartum, is most of the time. When kids turn reading time into pillowfight time, the pillowfights often win — my efforts to get my kids to sit still and *listen* to my reading often backfire. When I say, “Do you treat your teachers this way when they read to you? I know you don’t, and shouldn’t. Your parents deserve no less respect,” my kids know I have a point. But they also don’t care much — not because they’re bad kids, but because they’re human, and disinclined, as humans are, to regard apparent nonentities.
My nonentitude was the price of bearing kids to begin with.
And I’m not special. My problems may be more medical than average, but I doubt they’re *more* than average. I worry that my parenting compares poorly to the median heroin-addicted mom’s, and sometimes it probably does (a kid who needs you can’t afford to care whether you’re passed out from drugs or from poor symptom control). But more likely, my parenting is within the realm of “most people” in “[I]f you have standards for the minimum morally acceptable parenting, and you would like humanity not to slowly go extinct, these standards must be achievable by most people.”
https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/moral-standards-for-parenting-need
I fear that it will be very hard to put that genie back in the bottle after so much time has been spent by so many attacking public school teachers in the U.S., well beyond anything that may be deserved, and it is only getting worse. That said, this is a good start on heading off the tide. I particularly like your note about (public school) teachers’ having to take everyone who comes in the door.
Born into the profession. Dad was a teacher, Mom taught, both grandmothers taught, one grandfather was a principal, all of my aunts or uncles except one became or married teachers.
But, HISTORY. Far from always being a respected profession. Grandma was fired at the end of a school year so that a cheaper, inexperienced teacher could be hired for the following year. During the Great Depression, Grandpa fired female teachers who had husbands with jobs. During his first year of teaching, Dad had to borrow $10 from his father to make it through the month. Fifteen years later he had to drive 30 miles to another town to avoid being seen with a union organizer.
Like a song I had to sing
I sing it for you
Like the words I have to bring
I bring it for you
Like I said, I am “1980’s Guy” (hat tip Carolla…who I now fing despise because of he is a Trump apologist…I cannot and will not forgive anyone for being in communion with Heat Miser incarnate, but I parenthetically digress) and U2 War was formative like no other album on my 14 year old mind that could not stop listening to over and over (remember when you actually had to do that). Still holds up if you ask me, and will for as long as people we still be listening to Bach.
Two things I would teach the kids to be alright, first and foremost
Speaking of honor, all kids must swear an oath in every classroom across the fruited plain: A student will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those that do. In other words, a student shall love his classmate as oneself. Hmm, thanks A.C.Losers for already nipping those two great ideas out of being front and center out our public classrooms. The rest of Like a Song is very insightful, if you did not know already, give it a jingle (hat tip Dennis Miller…another Trump sellout….where have all my Republican cowboys gone…oh, wait, thank God I still have you Jay to give me hope), unless you already don’t much care for 80’s rock and roll.
Anywho, back in the day my 60’s something father and great teacher would be equally dismayed as you about these trying times in public schools and the Trump phenomenon that has at least not brought his ugly mug to be placed front and hanging center…yet. Leave that to happening first in those MAGS rally’s they call church attendance in the bayou’s making like Huey Long. But like I have already lamented on another post of yours, about what my dad would have and done with cheaters, if caught in the act, he would just rip the onlooker test in half and wish the kid good luck passing the test after just getting a “zero”….I believe my dad, if still alive, would note the same thing I will about the above picture….It is a man at the front of a kids class. Last time I was in love with a teacher, 30 out of 33 of her fellow elementary teachers were women…and I distinctly remember the time they where all in communion that “Joy” (my moniker for him, for I always laughed going in such a thing with such a misnomer for just being an awful shit in the box, I mean port a potty…thank god I am not a woman) John Edwards (where is that thousand kilowatt smile now) should be our next President. Those were the good old dayz. Anywho, so long as there has been no wrecking for how utterly corrupt the teachers unions where during the Chinese Communist Corona Party man caused pandemic…when schools with names like Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln where needlessly closed down for….depending on where you lived…Like a Song, to right to be wrong, our nations kids teachers unions are still misruled as our federal government is…Trump is inbreeding his executive branch with Diehard Trumpers, just as our crudely named National Education Association already has with progressives. Teachers salaries can and only will go up as Admin goes down. But with all thing’s government, the swelling only continues. Gotta run on. Thanks for taking my rant Onward and Upward. Peace through superior mental firepower
I was an educator for 40 years - 20 years teaching mathematics to middle school students and 20 years in teacher education. And my wife is currently teaching math to 7th graders as I write this comment. Teaching has been equated to being an emergency room physician. You do not get to select what kind of patients you will treat, and you are constantly triaging between minor issues and real emergencies. Yes, there are horrible teachers, but when I work with new colleagues to the profession, I share this quote from Pat Conroy - "Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing they had taught me their larcenous skills well.”
Thank you for the post!
I am glad I read "The Compost Files" by Sherri Coale. One essay dealt with her fourth grade teacher. That started an interesting exchange of messages between me and a classmate from the first grade through high school (a relationship now going on 63 years) about teachers who made us excited about learning. In her case, that led to her being a teacher. Thank you, Helen Smith and a few others.
Teachers are vitally important. I had very good ones who had a strong positive influence on me. The problem is with the ones are awful and have a lifelong job they can stay awful in. The teachers union makes it almost impossible to get rid of them. I sympathize with all teachers having to deal with kids and parents in public schools today. Very challenging.
Several of my teachers growing up made a big difference in my life, inspired me, introduced me to things I didn't know existed...to this day I am grateful to those teachers...they had a lot to do with who I am today.
My original goal was to become a teacher and teach at the college level, History most likely. But life intervened, and I never got there.