Don’t get me wrong—I love America, and I’m so thankful to have lived here my entire life and to have been privileged in so many ways. I realize that our education is much better than some other nations, and I realize that I am privileged to have the opportunity to attend a university where I can earn a degree in education. I realize that our system of education is much better than some other nations and that there is a lot to be thankful for.
Do you think I would be a college student studying education if I didn’t have at least a little hope for the system? Do you think I would be working as hard as I can to learn as much as I can if I didn’t want to make a difference in students’ lives? Believe me, I do. I have all the hope in the world. But I’ll be honest…I’m a little discouraged.
I was scrolling through my feed on Facebook today and saw two different occurrences of female high school students who had been taken out of class, embarrassed, and made to change clothes. Why was that? Because according to the administrators dealing with these two students, the education of female students is not as important as the education of male students. While these administrators may not have meant to embarrass the girls or make them feel inferior to their male counterparts, there is something wrong with the way schools are handling dress code.
As a female future-teacher, this hurts my heart that these girls had to miss valuable instruction time because their shoulders were showing or their skirts were not exactly five inches from the knee. In most colleges and universities, there is absolutely no dress code…and we still learn, males and females alike. I realize that high school students sometimes lack the maturity that teachers and administrators would like for them to have, but I personally feel that education is more important than what a student is wearing. It makes me sad to think that our schools are putting something like the length of a skirt before a student’s time in class, or making a student feel that her education is somehow less valuable because of her biological sex.
Along with that, there are other issues are in the community, such as parents who rant on Facebook about their teachers’ “ridiculous” list of school supplies that need to be purchased. By doing this, these parents are teaching their students that adults do not respect teachers, and that students shouldn’t either. This is hurtful. This makes me feel that in three short years when I am in the classroom on my own, that my students’ parents will make falsely rooted comments about me being greedy for requiring certain materials.
What if my students’ parents come to me on parent-teacher conference night to yell at me about materials, discipline, or their student’s grades? What if my students don’t respect me because their parents have made comments like, “She’s fresh out of college? She probably doesn’t know anything about teaching”? Or what if my students (who will most likely be taller than me) decide to test me by standing up to me or talking back to me? Of course I’ve had training on this is the school, but will I have the support of the students’ parents, or will they yell at me instead? Will I have the support of my administrators? Will I have the support of the community? These are things that I have to think about already.
I’m not a mother yet. I do not have my own children. But I do have the students in the schools where I student teach. These are my kids. And when I am a wife and a mother, I will also be a teacher. When I have kids of my own, I will also have my school kids. The community does not see that I love the students who walk into my student teaching classroom every day. I care about them. I worry about them when they are absent. I miss them over school breaks. I wonder if they are doing well when they leave my class and go to the next grade.
The community thinks that I wanted to be a teacher for the summers and Christmas breaks at home, the “easy” pay, and then job where I can sit behind a desk for the entire day and go home. What they don’t realize is that even as a student teacher, I go back to my dorm room and work on lesson plans. I help my host-teacher grade tests. I spend my own money sometimes on candy for my kids. I did not choose my career path for the perks. I chose this path because I love my students and I want to help them make their future bright, but instead of being recognized or appreciated, I am looked down on. I am not looked at as a professional, but as a college girl looking for a rich husband. And that makes me sick.
Again, I love public schools. I would not be a college student who is studying education if I didn’t. I have all the hope in the world that I will truly make a difference in my students’ lives, just like some of my teachers have made a difference in my life. I do not simply want to be a teacher, but it is more that I feel like my gift to the world is to teach. I cannot imagine myself doing any job other than teaching.
However, it is very hard to realize that my profession will most likely not be supported by the community or the parents of the very students who will come to my class every day. It is difficult to realize that I will most likely not be supported by the very people who send their own children to me with the expectation that they will learn. With everything I have experienced in my life and seen on TV or social media, it’s easy to be discouraged. In fact, it’s really hard not to be discouraged…but, I will not give up.
I will become a public school teacher and I will wake up every day with the realization that I have a passion and an obligation to teach students to think for themselves, to make their own paths, to work hard in school so that they can have a bright future, and to give back to the world. No, I will not give up. But it would help if our nation supported the people who spend the majority of every day helping make the future a better place.