Heiress Teaches Hoodlums Day 8

I always look forward to Mondays. On Sunday night when everyone has to get home early to be ready for Monday, I just smile because so do I have to be ready for Monday but not until 3:00!!! I enjoy my teaching but not necessarily the conditions under which I teach. If I'd never worked in the corporate world, I might be more tolerant of inefficiencies. For example, when you teach you lose the right to go to the bathroom whenever the urge hits; you cannot leave a classroom unsupervised so you either call for security to watch your class (and they're never quick) or you wait and race down the student-clogged hallway between classes. Most everyone knows that a teacher's work is not done when they walk out the door - piles of papers have to be graded and weekends are often spent finishing papers and planning lessons.We don't get nice relaxing lunches, either - they are spent eating on our feet while we patrol lunchrooms, hallways or outside play areas. During the course of any corporate business day, I might stroll over to another manager's desk and visit - not when you teach! There's no time to visit with colleagues. I thank my lucky stars that I have a room with a linoleum floor where I can see the dirt and sweep or scrub away; many classrooms have old filthy carpet that hasn't been cleaned properly in years. We all put up with technology - we stumble over heaps of cords that are shoddily installed, we dread the too often message that all systems are down, and we're grateful for technology as it is delivered. We are given a tiny dark workroom under the stairwell with no windows and inadequate lighting to work on our prep period. We're not allowed to work in our rooms because we most often share the room with another teacher; we must haul our papers, resource books, pencils, staplers, paper clips,and grade cards with us to the work room. Further, we're not allowed to use the copier in the workroom because it belongs to the day school. We must cart our papers from the workroom to the principal's office and use the very slow copier there. Large copy orders are sent to the print shop which helps when you're organized. For those impromptu lessons, just another teacher prevention barrier, I call it! The kids are what makes us love what we do. It certainly is not the salary or the conditions. A teacher needs a lot of dignity up front when entering the teaching profession as dignity is not nurtured inside the system.