So you want to teach. Let me give you a preview of what your life will be like if you succeed in becoming an elementary school teacher. If you become an elementary school teacher this is what you might expect.
For nine months of the year your life will not be your own. You will share it with twenty or thirty students that will worm their way into your heart so much that you will protect them as if they were your own. You will take pride in the accomplishments and cry with them when they cry. You will find yourself being their personal cheerleader and shoulder to cry on.
You will find yourself paying for instructional materials because the district doesn’t have the money. You will be buying rewards for the students and sometimes giving lunch money for those that are hungry, but forgot their money. When it comes to preparing your taxes you will be scared to tell the accountant how much you have spent on school because they won’t believe it.
Even though people think you have a short day you will find differently. You do not get coffee breaks, you have to sneak bathroom breaks and recesses and lunch time are most often spent helping students do their work. You will come early to get prepared for the day and stay late to do the same. You will take work home and spend your own time getting prepared.
Then there are those three nice summer months that everyone thinks you get. You will find yourself using the summer to take classes and prepare new materials for the next year. Reviewing and getting acquainted with new curriculum will occupy part of your summer. Additional school hours will be needed to recertify so you will take classes, which you will have to pay for, not the district. Your three free summer months are now shot you might get three weeks.
In class you will be asked to keep a child’s attention for seven to eight hours. Keep that attention when they are hot and there is no air conditioning, when they are cold and the furnace is broke. Keep their attention during the first snow storm when everyone wants to be outside and during the first signs of spring when even the teacher wants to be outside.
When the weather changes so do the students so you need to be prepared to change your methods with the weather. The students will change with what is for lunch or what they had for breakfast. Any little change in the environment will change the students and you need to be ready to adapt to that change.
You will be expected to be a disciplinarian, a judge, a counselor, a therapist, a nurse, a detective, a student, a surrogate parent and any other number of roles that seem to be thrusted upon an elementary teacher.
The one thing that you need to remember is that above all else you are a teacher. It is a noble profession. Money will never be your reward, but the results of your instruction will fill you with pride. When the child reads his first novel, or writes their name for the first time, will bring a smile to your face and will tug your heart because that child will look up at you and say “Thanks.” That one word makes it worth all you do.
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