Frazz by Jef Mallett for February 23, 2023

woke rage incoming…..

GOOD teaching is done by people who can’t help themselves. Bad teaching by time-serving drones.

Bill Cosby taught the world that one has to be a good entertainer to be a good teacher. I used to live just a half mile from his house.

Good teachers are like good doctors, they have a lot of patience..

The fact that teachers sometimes have to purchase their own classroom supplies is a disgrace.

And they get a Master’s Degree for a fairly low-paying job. It’s a labor of love, and many people treat them like garbage.

As so many students make zero advancement in learning. Something has to change.

I came to teaching after college, 6 years USAF, 6 years as a newspaper ad rep. Best training I could have asked. College [liberal arts, not teaching courses] widened my horizons. USAF taught not only self-discipline, but also the understanding of and tolerance of bureaucracy [and how to survive despite it]. Advertising sales taught me that there are things business owners need to succeed in business but which they resist until shown the value.

Public education includes all those features and more, but most of all the final item – value. Teachers often meet resistance and indifference in the classroom. The job is to get past that to make the sale. To use a trite phrase: It’s the gift that keeps on giving. After 25 years of retirement, I still believe that, and I believe there are many in the profession for whom that is still the mantra. Hold tight.

We’ll give a person millions of dollars to play a game so that we can feel superior to fans of the other team, but we’ll complain that teachers are “overpaid”.

.

Pointing this out makes me an elitist, somehow.

“I’m only in it for the money.” —No teacher ever

When I began teaching in an inner city school in East St Louis in the early 70s, the supplies were so sparse that when a big box of crayons was sent to the school, a veteran teacher told me to grab all I would need for the next 30 years, because it might take that long to see more of them. I taught sixth grade and was the only person in the room who could read above the 3rd grade level, most less than that. When I tried to borrow books from the lower level teachers, so the kids could learn from books that were appropriate to their levels, they told me that their kids were already having to share the books that were available to them.It was around Thanksgiving when my husband asked me “Honey, I know how much your job means to you, and I understand that in order to teach you have to buy what the kids need, but do you have any idea about when you might start breaking even?”

I kind of chuckle whenever I see “woke” used pejoratively. Guess some people do think living asleep at the switch is better/easier, but it amuses me they brag about it.

Teachers have it easy. What other job holds you completely responsible for up to 40 kids at a time but gives you no real authority to discipline them, lets you be used as a punching bag by both the left and the right, and all for less than the average garbage collector makes?