I LOVE MY JOB .... SORT OF

I love my job.  Wait.  Let me rephrase that.

I love teaching.  Believe me, for all the shit teachers take from students, parents, the community, the media, and politicians, the only good thing about teaching is that so many of us suckers actually love it.

When I was little, my grandmother came to live with us.  A retired school teacher, she brought reading and music books with her.  Up until sixth grade,I dreamed of being a teacher.  I played school, made up rosters, pretended to teach classes in the guest room by passing out make-believe papers and scolding make-believe students.

I loved school until a few weeks into seventh grade when we moved from New Hampshire after six years back to Massachusetts.  I made friends here, but the school system compared to the one I attended in NH, didn't live up to its hype.  I regressed two years in math and two years in foreign language.  The  one advantage the Massachusetts schools did have was that they did not require French, as my elementary school did.  Lest you think I went to school in the boonies of North Country where French Canadian is a common second language, I attended school in southern New Hampshire where people speak English without any trace of accent.  We pronounced every letter of the alphabet and said words like "Parrrrrrk" and "Carrrrrrrrr" and "Packey."

When I moved back to Massachusetts, a place I last lived in when I was barely six years old, it didn't take me long to develop an accent, a distaste for school, and the choice of throwing out two years of French with Miss Pichette for Spanish with a teacher who put red nail polish in the centers of her nails like a racing stripe.  By the time I hit tenth grade, I had both of my parents' signatures and skipping school down to a fine art.  I skipped just enough days to avoid the state-mandated no-pass law, and I graduated four months early my senior year because I hated school so much.  I didn't hate the people; I hated the confinement.

I spent years at other jobs, other careers, but I volunteered constantly in the schools, then fell into substitute teaching eventually, and then that led to graduate school.  Before I knew it, I had my own classroom.  If only I'd started this when I had a chance, younger and normal college age rather than in my thirties, I might be looking at retirement in two years.  As it is, I'll die at my desk before I see a dime of pension money.

The best part?  People I went to (skipped) school with are in shock by what I do.  When I tell them I'm a teacher who never calls in sick if I can avoid it, that I go to school every single stinking day, they laugh and ask, "No, tell me the truth.  What do you really do?"

Teaching is a great gig because I get to have fun.  I tell the kids all the time, if they're not having fun learning, then I'm not having fun teaching, and that makes for a very long day.  But still teachers get kicked around.

Face it.  Teachers are easy marks.  Even though we are salaried and work many unpaid hours above and beyond our contractual time, we still get shit on.  Firemen who work double and triple overtime and make $175,000-plus a year don't get crapped on half as much as lowly salaried teachers.

I don't usually post links, but in this case I must.  This is for people who say dumb shit like, "I'm a taxpayer and I pay your salary."  Guess what?  I'm a tax payer, too, and I pay for your frigging kids' educations, too.  Bite me.

Jimmy Kimmel gets it.  So, tongue partially but mostly in cheek, here's a little something that has as much truth in it as it does laughs. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T8ovblvQM0