Teacher Appreciation Week

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all my fellow teachers out there! I know I’m a little late seeing as it’s almost the end of the week (yay!) but I’m just now getting the time to write this post. If you didn’t already know, I guess it’s pretty obvious now that my day job is teaching. I don’t talk too much about it on here, but seeing as it’s what I spend my days doing I figured I should post something for this appreciation week.

While I love all my students and enjoy teaching, it is not uncommon for me to feel like I want to pull my hair out or bang my head against the wall! I’m pretty sarcastic with my students which with the students at my school works really well and helps me actually have better relationships with them. I remember last week, I said to a student who was being particularly annoying that she was taking years off my life.

And this ranges from teenage attitudes (I teach high school) to “office” politics and standardized testing. Teaching is hard work! I always get offended when people talk about how “easy” it must be to be a teacher and how we get the summers off. But I always like to counter this with the argument that teachers spend so much time outside of school getting work done – from prepping lessons and activities, lesson planning, grading, etc. And to the critics who say teachers get summers off – most teachers have summer jobs so they don’t go broke in the summer and I like to remind these critics (some of which are my own friends!) that I and other teachers get paid much less than other careers! With all this work and answering to students, parents, administration etc., it’s not hard to believe that by June teachers, more often than not, are burnt out. Did you know the teaching profession has a high turnover rate? And while doing a Google search just now I saw that the teacher dropout rate is higher than the student dropout rate!

Am I going to be a teacher forever? Who knows. But what I do know is that teachers deserve this week of appreciation!

I received this apple from a student today! I asked why and he said he’s always wanted to give an apple to a teacher so he decided to give me one. Like I said before, I’m sarcastic with my students sometimes so of course my reply was “Is it poisoned?” But seriously, it was a very sweet gesture and I think the little things like this definitely make all the more annoying things we deal with as teachers worthwhile.