From the Desk of M.J. Smith
October 25, 1997
To the United States Government:
Well, I have survived the first quarter of teaching… glory hallelujah!
I thought maybe I should write to let you know how this whole teaching experiment is going… after all, you did fund my education, sort of. In an I-have-to-pay-it-all-back kind of way.
The thing is, teaching a bunch of five-year olds how to read shouldn’t be that hard, in the grand scheme of things. However, when considering the context of the classroom, it’s enough to make a saint pull out her hair… or a gun (for self-termination of course). Not that there are ever any guns available in the classroom – administrators tend to be rather strict about those kinds of things.
I suppose the thing that makes it so difficult is the fact that you’re not trying to teach one child how to read a word like “cat.” No. Instead (though no one EVER admits this) what you’re really trying to do is teach twenty-five kids NOT to pull each other’s hair, NOT to pee on their chairs, NOT to run in the classroom, NOT to stand on their desks, NOT to crawl under their desks, NOT to scream or holler or use profanity, NOT to speak without raising their hands first, NOT to grab things without asking, NOT to climb the walls or Ms. Smith or the bathroom sink (all of which must be accomplished with a positive attitude of course) and finally, if you happen to manage it, you’re supposed to somehow get the lot of them to read the sentence “The cat is black.” And when it doesn’t happen? Well, that’s all right, I usually have to clean the finger paint off the walls anyway.
And I suppose the worst part of it is that at the end of a very exhausting day, when all I have the energy for is to collapse in my bed and pray for death, instead, I end up dragging myself toward the bane of all teachers’ existence: my second job. It’s really not fair, you know, the way society pays a basketball player millions of dollars for the privilege of playing a game, while the caretakers of our children are paid in pennies. I suppose this is the system we buy into – the one that strangles the life out of its public servants until finally, one day, they snap, and become that which they once reviled: that old, cranky, set-in-her-ways, snarling, bitter educator (or social worker, police officer, etc.) whom everyone avoids and prays retirement arrives in swift order.
Yes, I see my destiny, my doom stretched before me and yet, I continue to work within the system that shall one day destroy me. Why? I suppose because, in the end, the children, for all their wily ways, have somehow managed to crawl deep inside of me and there, they reside, also my destiny, but this time my hope, my one true glory beckoning salvation.
And so, I plod ahead, working two jobs, collecting my pennies, teaching the children how to read. Which brings me to my question – if I play basketball with my kids at recess, and invite the neighborhood residents to watch, do you think maybe I could get my salary changed to reflect the additional duties?
Sincerely,
M J Smith (aka Ms. Viper)
Kindergarten Teacher Extraordinaire