One of My Pet Peeves

As an educator for more than twenty-five years, there are plenty of things that people say to degrade the work of those of us who have chosen this profession. To be clear, I include every single person in a school district as an educator, from the Board members to facilities and administrative staff. In addition, of course, are the paraeducators and the teachers. 

One of the things that people say that bothers me the most is this: 

What are the top three reasons to be an educator? June, July, and August. 

First of all, let's be clear about something. There is only one month in the entire year with no students attending school, and that's July. We have students until June 15 this year, and our students will return before the end of August. 

Secondly, educators often take classes over the summer to improve their practices. We know for a fact that the one thing that improves student outcomes more than any other factor is teacher instruction. Some educators have other jobs over the summer. Some choose to continue to work in the building, or at home, long beyond their contracted days. 

Finally, if those examples were not true, I wish every single educator could take this summer fully off to rest and recharge from this year. Honestly, this year was more complicated than any other year we've experienced since March of 2020. There was so much hope for this year - and it was dashed by the omicron surge and a long hard winter. More recently, there was the omicron variant, along with substantial staff and student absences throughout the year. 

The staff absences pose a unique challenge of putting the right people in the right places. Our Co-Principals spent more time than they care to admit ensuring that our students could be safely supervised. They did a phenomenal job, as we only had one day where we closed due to staffing. The student absences are a bit more complicated. 

Imagine in a class of twenty, half of the class is absent on a given day. What do you do? Do you move ahead with your plans and prepare to catch up the other ten? Or do you wait for the ten that are absent to come back to class and teach the entire group at once? What if there were ten missing the following day again, but it was a different group of ten? Can you sense this math problem spiraling a little bit? 

There is no easy answer to any of this. And still, our educators showed up. Every. Single Day. We had Board members volunteering to be substitute teachers. We had paraeducators who did not have a consistent assignment for weeks at a time. We had Facilities personnel working in the Kitchen, and we had administrative staff juggling several desks at a time. 

So can we please agree that the top three reasons to be an educator are: the students, the students, and the students? Because there is not a school building in this entire state (nor our country) that doesn't reflect the love, devotion, and commitment to children more than we saw this year.