CHANGING FACE OF TEACHING

There has been a lot of press this past year on teachers leaving the profession for good.  Not just the typical ones you hear about in the news ("Half of all new teachers will quit in their first five years."), but experienced, long-term teachers are leaving.  I have read many of the posts and letters and understand their concerns of how the profession has changed.  The focus has moved away from teaching, and is mainly on testing (and more testing, and even more testing....).

What few people talk about are the other ways that teaching has changed over the years.  While we spend more time on test prep than ever before, we also have to spend more time on nursing, nutrition, discipline, social skills, and security issues than ever before.

My school is starting Breakfast in the Classroom soon.  Even though we have an updated Cafeteria, it will be the teachers' job to give breakfast in the classroom, clean it up, pray that the bugs stay away (we already have an ant and roach problem), and still try to take care of our regular job that we normally do during that time.  The cafeteria workers will still be paid, but we are taking their breakfast responsibilities away from them and adding them to our already overcrowded scheduled.

We have more and more medically fragile and/or special needs students in schools, without enough personnel to provide them everything they need, so teachers end up taking on nursing duties.  While my school has a nurse on staff, sometimes she gets sick or called away and the teacher is responsible for those duties.  Those duties require training.  While I have received some specialized training over the years for specific students: Epi-pen and Type 1 Diabetes insulin injections, and I have completed the district's annual training on blood-borne pathogens and food allergies, teachers have not been trained in First Aid and CPR.  If we are going to continue to fill in as a school nurse as needed, we need more training, especially for emergencies.  We really need substitute nurses for when the regular nurse is out. 

We have a violence epidemic in our country and teachers must be prepared to lay down their lives for their students. That is something we always would have done, but now we're actually receiving training from Police Officers on the right way to handle such violent encounters.  The new part of our security training this year was the permission to fight if an intruder gets into our classroom, instead of just hiding and hoping for the best.  While they gave us a few ideas on what to try, I realized that if my ultimate goal is to get the gun away from the intruder, I'd sure better know what to do with the gun if I can get it away from him.  That prompted me to ask a Police Officer family member for some gun safety training.  I have never held a gun, and really never intended to.  But now I must be prepared in case there comes a day when I have to have a gun in my hands to save the lives of my students.  Sad to say, but maybe every teacher needs gun safety training too.


These days, teachers are expected to take on more and more responsibilities. Add that on top of the massive stress of state and district testing, it's no wonder teachers are leaving the profession.  Being a teacher is so much more than just teaching these days.  It requires a major commitment!  It must be a true calling, not just a job.

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I am not ready to leave education.  I enjoy the little piece of my job that I actually signed up for: teaching.  I enjoy working with students and other teachers.  Sometimes it is absolutely exhausting, but it is still worth it.  These children deserve the best.  So, I will continue to look for the good in my profession, continue to fight for my students, and continue to work hard to be the best teacher I can be.