Family and friends, please pray for our schools each morning before the first bell rings. You may do this already as an afterthought as you are chugging your lukewarm coffee and frantically trying to get out the door before that five minute window during your morning commute that ensures you will make it to work on time- like I do more often than I like to admit. Or maybe youre better than that, but are humble enough to refrain from gloating. However, I must ask you to pray without ceasing and in earnest for our schools. We need to pray about everything, yes, but the past several weeks have reminded me that my fellow educators are on the front lines daily, doing their best, loving kids, and are often very defeated in spite of their best efforts, broken hearts, and empty wallets. I have heard and witnessed some pretty disparaging remarks at the expense of passionate educators as of late, and they are all cheap shots. Some bullies never grow up, I suppose. Whether you have kids or not, pray .You are a taxpayer, yes, but our schools are NOT, I repeat NOT a waste of your tax dollars. If anyone uses that rhetoric with me one more time, please do what my colleagues and I do on a daily basis for a solid month and see if you dont change your mind. Most of my colleagues and I work on average, 65 hours a week during the school year. We also do intense professional development and/or teach summer school. We do all of this for the love of our kids, and the love of learning. We do none of it for the financial gain or public accolade. I promise you, more often than not, there are far more exceptional teachers than bad teachers. If you hear anyone bashing a teacher, please share this with them. Many of us have students with special needs that require extra energy and innovations. I am willing to listen if my teacher friends need to vent. I share the struggle. I feel the pain, but I come back because I truly love what I do. I know they do, too. My kids are just that. Mine. I love them, I cherish them, I encourage them, I guide them, and I do my best to teach them life skills as well as an appreciation for literature, geography, history, and current world events. We laugh together. We cry together. Sometimes they try my patience in ways I never thought possible, and with the amount of eye rolls I have accumulated in eight years, I know this is true for them about me on occasion. I have them for nine months, and I still shed a few tears on the last day of school. Mostly, because I am so proud of how much my kids have accomplished and grown. On occasion, I shed tears because I feel defeated that for whatever reason, I havent reached them and I worry for their future. I criticize myself and anguish over perceived failure on my part, so believe me, any criticism thrown my way has already been doled out by yours truly. I became a teacher at the same campus I still teach today. My colleagues are my friends, and have indeed grafted themselves into my family, and almost all of them experience what I do, and feel what I do. We will continue to love our kids. We will continue to give our best and call forth their best. We will continue to stand on the front lines, side by side with those who share this mission. But for now (and always) we really, really, really, REALLY need your prayers.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 23:49:30 +0000
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