Our schools have been mostly back in person with a few virtual learning days here and there. However, other states are only now easing back into classrooms. This should be an exciting time for not just the students but the teachers as well. However, the comments people are leaving on social media pages would make any teacher, no matter how dedicated they are, want to throw their hands in the air and say, “I give up.”
Comments like,
“Good, it’s about time teachers go back to work.”
“Finally, teachers will actually have to work for their paychecks.”
“I guess the break is over for teachers.”
For the last two years we have been in the midst of this horrible pandemic and our teachers have really gotten a bad rap. Comments about how nice it must be for them to be able to work from home are not only hurtful, but ignorant.
You would think after two years of this people would finally see how valuable our teachers are. They do not want to teach from their homes. Ask almost any teacher and they will tell you in-class learning is much more valuable. The only reason they accept working from home in these times is to keep themselves and their families safe and protected. Who wouldn’t want that?
The adjustments they have had to make during the last two years have also added stress and uncertainty in their lives. Having to create online lesson plans at the drop of a hat when they are surprised with an unexpected virtual learning day, knowing a lot of their students don’t do well with at-home lessons and trying to accommodate for each individual student does not sound like a no-stress situation. But they do it. They show up each and every day because they didn’t take this job for the money, they took this job because, regardless of what people might think, they do care deeply for their students and want to see them succeed.
Teachers are some of the hardest working, passionate human beings we have and yet it has become so easy for people to dismiss them and make ignorant comments about how they get too much vacation and are paid too much. Those teachers deserve and need those summers off, most of them are still doing lesson plans and getting their rooms ready for the next year during that “vacation.”
The job has changed quite a lot throughout the years; maybe people don’t realize that. It would be surprising, though, if that’s the case considering we parents were home with our children for nearly an entire year. That alone should have been eye-opening to us.
We need to remember teachers are human beings and much like our heroes in the medical field, they need our praise and patience too. But more than that, they need our support. Just imagine how it would change our kids’ lives if we actually gave our teachers the support and patience they need, instead of putting them down in these difficult times.
