Teachers are insane. Factor in the public scrutiny, the low pay, the extra hours, the grading, and the enslavement to standardized testing, and you have to ask yourself what college-educated professional would sign up for that? Crazy ones, that’s who.
You would not believe some of the things I have seen teachers do in the course of a school day. Shocking, I tell you. Shocking. Once, a teacher put money in a student’s lunch account because she heard him in the hall saying he didn’t have any money left to eat that day. Can you believe that?
There is a teacher at my school that gets jackets out of the lost and found items that are bound for a donation site, takes them home, washes them, mends them if they need it, and hands them out to kids in the fall and winter that aren’t wearing any warm clothes. Are you serious?
During October, when we sell BooGrams, I have witnessed teachers buying for kids that typically don’t get one and sending them anonymously. What?!
I have seen teachers buying school supplies out of their own pocket so that kids don’t have to worry about their parents being able to afford their supplies. Craziness!
There was a time when a teacher quietly handed a student a tissue and patted her on the back when she saw her crying. She didn’t call attention to the girl, but that girl knew her teacher had her back. What kind of a monster does that?
One teacher at a former school bought a new book for each child she had (this was a high school teacher), wrote a personal note in it, wrapped it, and placed them on their desks the last day of school. She made sure she bought books based on what she had learned about them throughout the year. It became a tradition that the kids looked forward to all year. What a lunatic!
Don’t these teachers know it’s all about getting summers off? Don’t they know they don’t get paid enough to try so hard? Don’t they know that anyone who went to school could do their job and they shouldn’t want good benefits or a reasonable pension?
They must think that personal investment in kids is a payoff all its own.
And it is.
Share the crazy things you’ve seen at your school in the comments!