A tribute to teachers, wherever you are

I haven't been able to teach for over a year due to ill health, and I've had plenty of opportunity to reflect on my life as a teacher. So here are a few thoughts as a tribute to my colleagues, past and present, and to all teachers wherever you may be. The following blog post was prompted by this poster:

 

The 'unique emotional labour' that this image mentions is impossible to quantify, or to describe to others (unless they are your spouse/partner/children/family, who get it- oh, do they get it). Not only do you think about your students last thing at night and first thing in the morning, but you often dream about them. You worry about them, especially those who are flying under the radar, or who are sick, or in the midst of a family breakdown.

 

You never miss an opportunity to build your teaching resources- this means that you are constantly rummaging through the recycling bin to find the newspaper article that you meant to cut out before the paper was chucked.

Your parents even cut items out of foreign newspapers for you when they travel, because it might come in handy. You go to a movie and think, I wonder when this comes out on video- it would be great  for my [substitute the subject name] class. You find yourself deconstructing said movie while you are sitting there with your husband watching it, enjoying the movie together.

 

I've often said that being a teacher is a bit like being a celebrity- you can't go anywhere without being recognized. This includes being in a foreign country. At school, a conversation might go like this: Student: "I saw you at [insert café name] on the weekend and you were eating!" Teacher: "Then you saw me in my natural habitat." It's a bit like being in a David Attenborough documentary.

You must therefore be very well behaved when in public, because if you're not, everyone will know on Monday. A friend and colleague stopped to help an injured cyclist on her way to work early one morning. As she was waiting for the ambulance to arrive a carload of students went past, on their way to early morning sport training. Her feelings of being a good citizen were shattered by morning tea when word was out that "Ms B hit a cyclist with her car on the way to school!"
 

Your students will make you laugh, and they will make you cry, sometimes out of frustration, but sometimes because you just haven't got enough time to cover everything you want to in the time you're given. You cry when you discover that one of your students has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and you weep when you attend the funeral of a precious girl who looked the wrong way on a one way street and didn't see the car that hit her. You will cry when they are all grown up and graduating from high school, and when you read the card or note that is the last piece of writing that they will write for you.

This student was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour at the end of Yr 10;
against the odds she is now a first year medical student, having completed a Science degree

You will laugh at them when they turn up in class on dress up day, dressed as Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men, complete with enormous plastic terracotta pots suspended from their shoulders. (Try sitting down in one of them!)

 

You will watch your colleagues and wonder at their resilience: the teacher who suffers a sudden and devastating loss of a brother, but who, in the midst of her suffering and time off to plan his funeral, quietly comes to school just to teach her Year 12 class, and then goes home. Or the teacher who falls and hits her head at school, goes to the hospital to have it X rayed and is diagnosed with a broken nose, but returns to school and finishes the day. Or my beautiful friend, who would attend her chemotherapy sessions each Monday, and then teach the rest of the week, in spite of feeling horribly ill. Her students formed a guard of honour at her funeral. God bless you, Erin.

 

I could go on. All over the world there are teachers like these, quietly getting on with their job. They will spend their nights, weekends and holidays preparing lessons for their classes, or marking their students' work. They will meet with their colleagues to share their worries about particular students and to come up with strategies to help support them. They will rage at the politicians who blithely scrap the 'old' curriculum (while it is still in the process of being rolled out), introduced by the previous government, and bring in a 'new' one. But they will suck it up and get on with it, because they are teachers, and their students come first.

 

To all teachers everywhere: you are my heroes, as well as my colleagues and friends. You are building the next generation and it is impossible to put a price on that. Be kind to yourselves. Go gently.