R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

I was sitting at the hairdresser, exhausted.  After a week of dealing with other people’s children, I was weary.  My head lay backwards in the bowl, almost drifting off, when something made my ears perk up.  It was the voice of a  non-educator on the Oprah show talking about how horrible the schools are, how we are failing our students, and how we should run the schools like a business.  Is he serious?  Oprah, as all laymen, seemed to concur. Neither one of them would last a day in a classroom, much less a week.

Fast forward to home, reading the NEA site, where they posted a letter from a teacher to Oprah, blasting her for her education show, which did not include one educator!!! How can that be?  I believe we are the only profession where no one listens to the ones in the trenches. Everyone would rather whine about how we get summers off, our elaborate planning periods, our benefits, and tenure. We deal with children who want to be entertained, parents who see us as a babysitting service, and condone their children’s disrespect, principals who are non-supportive(not mine), and the new ideas, flung at us every day by people who have never taught a day in their life!    Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching, and I wouldn’t do anything else, but gee whiz, could we get a little respect?

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