Teachers do complain! They complain all the time. If you sit for lunch at the cafeteria with a group of teachers, this is all you hear – complaints… Teachers who share lunch with few friends in their room complain to each other. Complaining is good. This is an outlet, the only relief from the everyday hopeless grind…
The real question is why
don’t teachers voice their complaints in the media, in front of the governor’s
office, the white house…Well… they do but only when their livelihood is being
threatened, when a last straw is added to their heavy load, like benefits being
taken away... When that happens, they express anger not only over the specific
issue but over the accumulation of all their aggravation; about their
indignity, about every day’s frustration dealing with students, parents,
administration. About a system directed by people who had never been teachers in
their life, but pretend to know everything about fixing the education system…
The main reason why teachers
don’t protest the injustice more often is because they don’t have time… They
are working after hours, weekends and vacations; checking work, grading papers,
preparing lesson plans. At school, during short breaks or conferences, they are
always busy; trapped in an endless cycle of work. When, at last, they have a
chance to rest, perhaps few days during summer vacation, they are so exhausted
that they don’t even want to talk about school…
Another reason for not
voicing their frustration is, having their performance and role being attacked so
often, and so harshly, by superiors, politicians and media, that, as one of my
colleague once said, a self-doubt is creeping into their heart; lack of
confidence in their ability of being real good teachers…
Unfortunately, the system
takes advantage of this lack of confidence and lashes on teachers left and
right…
So why do teachers come back
every year to start over another impossible task? Well, we forget how
impossible it is… how tough and thankless the grind is and how impossible it is
to please any one at all… we just forget…
I remember my second year of
teaching, at a charter school, where I, and two of my friends, swore at the end
of the school year never to come back to that school, and for that matter never
to teach full time again. It was not even October when we were ready to run
back to that same school and beg them to take us back…
You see, we are just a naïve,
optimistic group of people who keep believing that next year will be better; we
will do a better job and as a result everything will be better… just stupidly
naïve group of people…
