Teachers

I started this blog to bring exactly the name of it - Inspiration, Love and Joy to whomever but mostly it was for me. For me to express my thoughts, my fears, my goofy laughable moments, my joys of whatever it was I was feeling at the time.


Today I read an article about teachers. If you would like to read it and I suggest you do it's here. I find it very intriguing on several levels.


My first impression of teachers when I was younger was oh they don't work hard, they get summers off, they get Christmas and Spring break and what are these professional days, those must just be days to party. 


I truly thought that. 


Move forward several years and I meet the love of my life. I meet him as he is just finishing his Masters of teaching degree and thought yeah this guy just wants all that time off too!  Just before we got married he started his first full time teaching gig. I thought this is going to be great. I work full time but he will be home early on Fridays and all those breaks he can do so much for me and around the house and when we have kids it's going to be awesome - he can look after the kids during those times. Well I was fooled.


By the second month of him teaching and while we were planning our wedding, really it was just me because he was busier than anything. He was up all night marking papers or designing exams.  Our wedding was the day after Christmas break started because he didn't want to miss work (really it was because if he took the time for a wedding and honeymoon at the time we really wanted he would lose pay which we could not afford). Onto our honeymoon and I look in the back seat and there is his briefcase full of papers to mark that had to be completed by the time school started. WTH????? I was getting really upset with this after all it's our honeymoon.  


Move forward several years later and we enroll our son Marcus in school.  We go to parent teacher conferences, I volunteer on parent council and in the classroom when I can. It's just me doing that a lot of the time as my husband is required to be at his work to do those same things for his students and their parents. Our son doesn't always understand that Terry is there for the other kids but not him. He doesn't always like Daddy's job.


While volunteering at Marcus' school I see/hear a lot from parents in exactly how the article states. I could go on and on about this but then I'd be blogging for a week.


I listen to Terry come home from work saying basically the same things as well as how he has had to deal with some kids that decided it would be cool to drink or do drugs in the school and then pass out and have to have an ambulance come for them and then listen to the parents saying it's not the kids fault. Or some kid bringing a gun or knife to school.


Teachers are not our babysitters. They are well educated people who have spent many years working on their skills and knowledge. I believe that parents and teachers should work as partners, really they spend more time in the day during a school year with our kids than we do. They also see our children in a different light than we do, after all we are a little biased when it comes to our own children.


There are many more points I could bring up but the article does that for me. 


Terry and I are so truly thankful for the teachers that Marcus has had in the past 5 years, they have helped us get through some rough spots, helped celebrate some accomplishments and had some great laughs. They are amazing people and we look forward to another amazing year working together with Marcus' Grade 5 teacher.