Many students build bonds with their teachers during their four years in high school. Some teachers would tell you it’s the whole reason for doing and staying with a job in education.
When some think of teachers they just think they come in to work, instruct the students, and leave and enjoy their summer vacation or school breaks. Many outside of education do not realize all the other things that can happen in a typical school day like attending to extra duties, responding to a full inbox of questions or forms to complete, breaking up fights or consoling an upset student, mediating drama between students, training and experiencing lockdowns on top of the lesson planning, grading, and actually teaching the lesson. Despite the busy schedule of their day to day, many manage to create meaningful relationships with students.
So it’s hard to imagine teachers are here for just a paycheck but rather for much more. The societal miscomputation is that they just work their normal 8-3 but what we do not see is all the after school work teachers do after school hours. Most teachers go home and must do all the grading from the day and all the lesson planning for the next day, which can be very time-consuming.
So what got all these teachers interested in teaching to begin with? For some they planned on teaching for as long as they could remember. For others, it was more of a surprise decision. For instance Kenwood’s Ms. Miller shared, “Teaching was never my original choice. I originally wanted to work in genetics with chromosomal abnormalities.” But what originally changed her mind and made her think teaching was the best decision was, “Once worked at a preschool for handicap children, and while working there she kept working with a kid named Alex to sign his name but after countless times he could not. One day all the sudden they are working on his name, and he was able to write it!” Ever since that day and after all the happiness that filled her, she knew she wanted to teach.
Kenwood’s Ms. Single who is well loved at Kenwood would seem like one that always wanted to be a teacher but “I actually wanted to be a pediatrician,” she says. “I knew I wanted to work with kids.”
Kenwood’s Mr. Wolf knew he always wanted to be teacher. “I always wanted to be a teacher; originally it was going to be a special ed teacher, but I soon found the love for art and knew that is what I wanted to teach.” Even though teaching was his original choice he added, “I started questioning my decisions but I soon found my place to fit but it was harder than I originally thought.” Even with all the struggle it took to get to where he is he said, “It was worth it because I love working with kids and find joy with it.”
Nobody said being a teacher was easy, there are multiple things that make their job hard that nobody likes talking about. But it is also important that students feel that even though teachers do a lot,their relationships with kids are one of the main reasons they do the job of teaching.
“Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.”- Halm Ginott
