You hit it, shortbun. We've got to have the foundation in and the backing from the home. We can teach our brains out all day, but if mom chased dad out the door with a knife the night before, or if the kids don't have their supplies, but the parents have their cell phones, hair-dos, fancy jackets, etc., or if they're constantly out with headlice that doesn't get treated appropriately, or...well, I could go on and on...our teaching isn't going to mean too much. Because parents can't be made to be accountable, the classroom teachers are the ones who take all the heat. If the scores aren't good, our school and our teachers are bad. So says society, I guess, or at least that's the way they portray it in the papers. It is very frustrating. We are losing really fabulous teachers to early retirement because they're so fed up. A lot of young teachers come in and leave within three years when they see what it is really like. Those of us who are too old to start new and too young to retire just hang in there and do our best, or burn out and just show up, a lot of times. We spend a lot of our own money and time to make our classrooms nice, and we spend our own money when, for instance, a little girl comes in with jeans so tight they are cutting her hipbones. She needed a jogging suit, something that would grow with her, and she "anonymously" got one. To all who are not teachers, I wish they could spend just one week in a classroom to see what it is really like. We do our best to overcome the behavior problems, which get more and more severe as children's mouths get bolder and their attitudes get worse. We compete with the ever exciting video games they play at home. I think most of us are trying, but I often think we are just fighting a losing battle. It is so nice when former students come back and reward your feeble efforts by tellling you that things they learned in your class have stuck with them and helped them in the upper grades, or they tell you how much fun they had when we did St. Lucia's Day or when we "went to Mexico" right in our classroom. I love the kids and enjoy the teaching, but the testing and documenting is a heavy burden these days, and the parental support is so diverse. Some parents are way overboard, smothering their kids, and some you don't see all year. Okay, that's my vent...I'm off to work. I Dis on my breaks to keep my sanity!
