The Right Now: More About Teacher Blogs.

I realize that I wrote about teacher blogs not very long ago, but for some reason they are still nagging at me. So I thought I'd write about it on my blog, which has mostly been about teaching.

Shhhhhh.

I have a lot of teaching friends. It's a solidarity thing--we all feel that we have this connection because we have to collectively stick it to the man. Or something. But when you friend a lot of teachers on facebook, you start to see a lot of teacher blogs, articles, open letters, and what-have-you. And here's how my inner dialogue goes when I start slipping down the slope of online teacher things:

Oh my GOSH. We are a MESS! This country is a MESS! Standardized testing and long hours and low morale and NCLB and everything not working!

I wonder what juicy things people said in the comments. Oy, she's been teaching for 12 years and hates everything. And this person says you can't be competent til you've been teaching for three years. Uh. I feel great now.

OH HEY, link to another article. YES, preach, writer, PREACH! I feel all of your hopeless emotions! Stress! Hopelessness! Early retirement! Death! RAA!

Another link? DON'T MIND IF I DO.

Why are there so many giant words? We're still talking about classrooms, right? With kids in them? Not science labs or factories?

Oh, now this person has all the answers to classroom manageme--nope, we're not going to look at that. STOP, Laura, before you feel inadequate.

C'mon, one more.

Or three.

You know how you feel after eating too many brownies, especially ones made from a box mix that have extra chemicals in them? That's similar to what I feel when I finish looking at teacher blogs/articles, more so now than I did last September. It's been hard to pinpoint why. Aren't these people simply giving voice to what I feel? Aren't they exposing to the world all the flaws I, myself, see in the system?

I think I've read enough of these to be able to categorize them.

1. Depressing news about education.

2. Things that aren't working.

3. How classrooms should/must be run.

4. LISTEN, I have degrees.

5. Teachers are sad, angry people and deserve more from the world.

6. Overly optimistic people who can't be real.

7. Perfect lesson plans.

8. The rare, funny blogs that are truthful and great.

Here's the thing about teachers: we spend a good deal of our work time telling smaller people what to do and defending ourselves against criticism from other adults. In that regard, it's a lot like parenting because somebody will always have a way to do it better than we do. We, especially, will have a better way to do it than our fellow teachers. Most of our feedback comes from children or people who are evaluating us, and it's hard to know exactly how we are performing because EVERYONE DOES IT DIFFERENTLY.

EVERYONE.

EVERYYYYYOOONNNNE.

So, sometimes after I look at all of the opinionated, overly sad/happy, or bossy blogs and articles, I take a minute to detox by thinking about my real-life job and how I am a human being.

Some mornings I go in excited and bossy.

Some mornings I put my head on the steering wheel because I don't think I have the strength to get out of my car.

All day long, I deal with unpredictable young people who eat a lot of sugar. Sometimes they say wonderful things to me. Sometimes they say really awful things to each other. Sometimes they refuse to do what I ask them to, even when I get mean (yes, one important thing that a lot of these written pieces leave out is that if you are incapable of being firm/mean, your teaching career will be a lot harder).

I do have unrealistic expectations set on me, but I also have realistic expectations set on me, and those are probably the ones I should focus on.

I don't like my mailbox, because it adds paper to my piles. I do like when chocolate is sitting on the table in the break room. I am a slave of the copier. I worry too much.

My classroom is not perfect and I make a lot of mistakes. But I am the matriarch, and the kids acknowledge that. My students are learning. If I tried much harder, I'd burn out by April.

I don't have to be like the millions of other teachers who are trying a million wonderful teaching methods in a million different ways.

Anyway, if I were in charge of creating teacher morale kits, here's what I would put in them:

Notecards that MUST be filled out and given to other teachers anonymously.