This Is What Teachers Do

When I was a kid, autmunal Sundays almost always consisted of three things: Detroit Lions football, a slow cooked Sunday meal and my mother doing schoolwork.  Often these three endeavors co-mingled.  The game would go on in the background while my Dad and I prepped a soup or a stew and my Mom sat on the couch lesson planning for the week, reading essays and correcting papers.  Most Sundays it took all afternoon and there was usually some Saturday time already sprinkled in to the weekend plans.  In short, Deborah Carlson did homework every night and every weekend until she retired in her late fifties.


I learned at an early age that this is what teachers do.  They do their homework.  They plan lessons.  For every piece of work they assign, they get the pleasure of getting that work back to correct and critique.  This is not heroic.  This is not particularly special or out of the ordinary.  Right now, while you read this, teachers in your community are doing this very thing.  This is what teachers do.


For my mother and scores of teachers just like her, there were curriculum council meetings, parent teacher conferences, board meetings, tutoring sessions and kids she brought home to have dinner with us and maybe even stay the night if they had no place else to go.  This is what teachers do.


We would go on family outings to the movies or the grocery store and sometimes we'd run into my mother's students.  They would hug her and call her Senora - a dead giveaway for one of her myriad Spanish students - she would smile and ask about their lives, especially when they were former students she hadn't seen for years.  The student would invariably turn my way and tell me how great my Mom was and that she was their favorite teacher and how much she helped to make school important or great or easier for them.  I would feel proud of her just because she seemed to care so genuinely about so many people she would only know for a short time.  This is what teachers do.


After more than twenty years of teaching, my mother went back to school and finished a Master's degree that she paid for with her own money.  Governmental requirements mandated that she finish an accelerated degree and she did so even though it had almost no bearing on her abilities as a teacher.  While she did receive a raise, it was a paltry sum when viewed in relation to the money, time and energy spent to obtain it.  She did this after more than four years of under-grad work and working for nine months for which she paid tuition to work a full time job under trial by fire.  The State of Michigan requires this from all of its public school teachers in order to be certified.  This is what teachers do.


The average UPS driver makes $58,707 per year.  Most of these positions require no more education than a high school diploma, nor do they require any unpaid apprenticeship or a pay for play entry program.  The benefits package for a typical driver is comparable to that of most State of Michigan teaching positions (Michigan offers some of the best in the country) and you can be eligible to up to as many as 7 weeks of vacation time per year.  Contrast that with the average salary of tenured teacher in the State of Michigan which is $54.739.  This is not an indictment of the value of a UPS driver or the level of their work ethic.  However, at the end of a driver's shift once all the packages have been delivered, they can leave work and not have to take it home with them.  Most nights, teachers will spend time grading, correcting, tutoring, planning and consulting after the work day has ended.  This is what teachers do.


Perhaps the most commonly overlooked aspect of the teacher compensation argument is the actual value of what they really do.  It's often said that being a parent is the world's most difficult profession.  If there is even a shred of truth to this maxim, then every teacher is tackling the toughest job around on a daily basis.  Playing educator, role model, ethics instructor, counselor, confidant, psychologist and dozens of other roles while many of their student's parents remain almost completely uninvolved.  These kids count on their teachers and whether or not you realize it, so do you.  Right now, they're teaching life lessons and basic skills to the next generation of doctors, lawyers, senators and mechanics.  They're molding lives and shaping the future.  This is what teachers do.