There are teachers, and those with a teaching degree

I hate the way education has been presented and pushed in America. I was an unfortunate victim of the Texas school system myself.

We have failed millions of children in a sad attempt to homogenize them into worker drones and I naively hoped it would be better by the time I had my own child.

It is not.

I can’t honestly say whether it has become worse or if I’m just more impassioned and bothered by it’s many failings now that I’m the parent. 

To be clear I don’t blame the teachers for this flaccid attempt at mind molding. 

Well, not all of them. 

The truth is, that the blind adulation you see tossed around on Facebook for the low salary and sacrificial hours of many teachers is a blanket that covers all, but is only meant for a select few. 

I had a handful of formative educators throughout my schooling years and, for them and their hard work, I could never adequately express the depth of my gratitude. Mr. Miller from Junior year stands tall among them as the teacher who most profoundly impacted my vocabulary and reignited a love for reading that I had lost somewhere among the assigned drudgery and book reporting of freshman and sophomore year. I would not have been capable of publishing a book without his deft teachings and compassion.

But, the Millers of the world are in woefully short supply, and as someone that spent several years supporting the IT infrastructure of schools around the Panhandle, I was more consistently saddened by the multitudes of teaching staff that hated kids. 

Education is a ridiculously difficult and underpaid job for those with conviction and passion. Unfortunately, passion and conviction in America are like a quality Tinder date. Rare. 

For the rest, it’s a cush gig where the larger parts of learning have moved to lesson plans built around TEKS, and summers off. Kinda like matching with a Tinder bot. The analogy works. I think. Just roll with it.

Am I committing the cardinal sin of calling out the “hardest job in Texas”? Nah, I’ve always had distaste for teachers that didn’t want to be there, and you should too.

The sad part is, that the lazy teachers are paid the same as the ones that give a shit. There are wonderful educators out there that are actively fighting to find a way to convey concepts and create engaging lessons remotely during this unprecedented time. I applaud their creativity and tenacity in the face of miserable obstacles.

Hell, half of their students may not have access to computers. All of their students are going through some pretty formative trauma right now. 

We all are.

And yet, they create videos, pivot their lessons and try to reach their kids. It’s impressive, and it’s sad to know how little that struggle will be rewarded. 

The rest of the teachers are sending out poorly organized packets, badly written math problems and linking to online videos that scratch the barest surface of the concepts they claim to be teaching. In fact, cursory Google searching has led me to multiple video lessons that provide much more comprehensive and more digestible information for my seven year old than she has received in her bi-weekly home-school booklet. We supplement in the hopes that she doesn’t struggle as much next year. A privilege that comes with my presence at home, and access to Internet learning that I have used myself. Not everyone has these same opportunities.

The point is this: We should applaud the teachers that are doing well, the ones that really care and are putting forth effort, and yes, I want to see them rewarded with a lot more money. But, we also need to be more comfortable calling out the vast gaps between those doing well and those that don’t care.

The most important thing we do in this country is educate the next batch of humans. They are the currency with which we participate on the international stage. When we fail them, we fail as a nation and fall behind. We already have.

A friend of mine once asked me if I was “a guitar player, or a guitar owner.” It’s a distinction I like and one I’ve carried with me. A similar distinction could be put in place here.

There are teachers, and those with a teaching degree. The former is absolutely worthy of your attention, money and praise. And if you’re upset by anything I’ve mentioned here, you probably fit squarely in that second category and I hope you find another easy job somewhere else. One that doesn’t negatively impact the formative years of my kid.


Side note, this is not a call out of “new math” you see people upset about. The concepts in new mathematical common core lessons are fantastic and much better at getting kids to grasp how numbers interact with one another than the memorization and times tables we all grew up with. If you don’t dig it, I thought this was a decent video discussing what is being attempted with the change in standards. When taught correctly, it can speed up mental math and help students better understand the flexibility in numbers.

There, hopefully I’ve offended everyone now.