Any teacher (current or retired) (not college)? Your biggest struggle as a teacher? Lots of detail please..?

Question

Im comparing different occupations and the emotional burdens with them, for a college class. Thank you!

Answer 1

My biggest struggle as a teacher is dealing with parents that  not do all they can do or sometimes they do nothing at all to make sure that their child will have a successful year at school.  Parents send their child to school unprepared with no materials and they do not question their child or make sure that homework is completed every night.  It is really sad to see how these parents are setting their child(ren) up for failure.  So I always make sure at the beginning of every year when school supplies are on sale I stock up.  I'm in there with parents shopping for at least 20 kids and they may be shopping for less than 5.  Also other struggles that I deal with are parents that do not push their child(ren) to exceed in school and I'm mainly talking about projects.  I have had students come to school and say, My mom wouldn't buy me the supplies, she said that she doesn't have any money."  My last year teaching I taught at a title I school and I understand that a lot of parents may not have money so I made up a project where they can use a coat hanger and I still received an excuse that their parent(s) would not let them use their one hanger.  Another thing that you will deal with is students' behavior.  Several times I have had to call parents and ask them to speak to his or her child about their behavior and I have had parents to say, "My child doesn't act like that at home."  My main thing with that is why would I take time out of my day to call you and make up a story about your child, because I wish that I didn't have to call you at all.  Students do act different at school (some not all) beacause they know that we can't discipline a them like his or her parents can.  We also need tougher rules on what a child can say and do to a teacher.  Students can always make a complaint against a teacher, real or made up and it may cost a teacher his or her job, but when a child does or say something very disrepectful to a teacher he or she will be sitting in your class the next day.  Most of these struggles that I have explained to you have not all happened to me, I have seen it happen to other teachers. I just make sure that I am fair and if a student does say something rude to me I forget about it because they are children and I am an adult.  I don't hold anything against that student because this is the profession that I decided to do.  You also may not know what kind of environment that a child lives in so just keep your eyes open to any behavior that is not the norm, some students are experiencing things that you couldn't even imagine at home.  You should not judge any student because he or she acts out or come to school everyday with nothing, but the clothes on their back.  Just accept them for who they are and help them become and educated individual.  I have cried over students and taken some home.  I picked this job because I love children and  want to help them one day become our future leaders.  No matter what my struggles are I am at work everyday, because if everybody continues to give up on children then when they become an adult society will.

Answer 2

I'd have to agree a lot with the previous poster...add some more thoughts...

1) Poverty.  It's impossible to teach kids that are hungry, cold, sick.  I've had kids in duct-tape shoes.  I've had kids in Michigan winters with no shoes on. Kids that bring every single possession with them to school, because they have no home.  Kids who live in cars.  Kids who live in the booth at Denny's.  Kids who squat in abandoned garages.  It's hard to give them hope.  It's even harder to teach them German.

2) Parents.  Parents who struggle in poverty.  Parents who don't know where their kids are, and don't care. Parents who do care, but won't follow-through with their kid at home.  Parents who don't value education.

3) Funding. It's 2008 and I'm running Netscape on a Windows 98 machine.  Antiquated technology.  Poor building facilities. Lack of funding for anything new. Lack of support services.  I worked in a school where I was given $40 per year to outfit my classroom.  I bought my own chalk, paper, and classroom ancillaries.  This was my first year teaching - back in 1998.  With a four year degree, I was offered a starting salary of $26k.  I spent over 3k in classroom supplies that year alone.  I didn't keep track of how much money I spent on buying kids' meals, winter coats, trips to the dentist...  

4) Bureaucracy.  Knowing what's right for kids, but having your hands tied.  Not having the resources or support necessary to do any real good.  Feeling limited by your curriculum.  Feeling limited by the system.  Getting so tied into being a cog in a wheel, not feeling any time to find inspiration or innovation.  Bogged down by NCLB.  Teaching to the test.  Running through the curriculum to catch up.  Feeling hopeless at reaching AYP, when half of your students have been absent 20 of the last 30 days.  

5) Students.  Dealing with verbally abusive students.  Kids that have given up.  Bad attitudes. A sense of entitlement.  Mistrust of adults.  Kids that are so angry, that no matter what you say or do, they are going to fight you.  Kids that steal from you, slash your tires, and threaten to kill you.  Kids you've enjoyed teaching, but even they don't every say thank you.

6) German.  I have to struggle to keep a German program alive at any given HS.  Spanish is #1 around here.  Always gets top funding, always gets top support.  German is the last to be thought of.  And it comes down to money.  When the school budget is tight, German is the first to go.  I feel like I'm working at 110%, running a 3-ring circus to increase enrollment, retain students, promote the language, keep up good exposure to the community, keep the bean counters from cutting my program, oh yeah, and teach.  I hold my breath every spring, waiting for my numbers for next year to come out....  this year, I'm back down again.  I walk a delicate balance between having a full-time job, and a part-time job.  But even when it's part-time, I still teach a full four year program.  So a general lack of respect for teaching/learning German in the US is a big problem for me, too.

Answer 3

Paperwork.  There's always more and more expected of us, but we are not given more and more time to complete it.

Lack of respect for us as professionals.  A person would never speak to their accountants the way they speak to teachers.  We're like servants.  People think they can say anything they want to us or about us and we're just supposed to shut up and take it because we "love kids."

I struggle to feel like what I do makes a difference.  I feel like I'm a daycare worker.  I babysit the children of people who'd rather not hang around their children.  And I get why they don't want to.