U is for Under-appreciated Teachers

U is for under-appreciated teachers today.  I have been telling lots of people that this is a hard time for teachers.  The education world is trying to change--and go in six million different directions.  I just hope that everybody is actually learning something somewhere!  I saw this article from Huffington Post a little while ago. The purpose of his article is the people shouldn't become teachers.  This is one of my favorite quotes from the article:

Teachers are being told over and over again that their job is not to teach, but to guide students to learning on their own. While I am fully in favor of students taking control of their learning, I also remember a long list of teachers whose knowledge and experience helped me to become a better student and a better person. They encouraged me to learn on my own, and I did, but they also taught me many things. In these days when virtual learning is being force-fed to public schools by those who will financially benefit, the classroom teacher is being increasingly devalued. The concept being pushed upon us is not of a teacher teaching, but one of who babysits while the thoroughly engaged students magically learn on their own.

Sometimes it really does feel like that. I spend a lot of my day grading and instructing students on appropriate behavior not actually teaching them about a great story in literature or history.  We all have a favorite teacher because they cared and actually taught us something.  I worry that the next generation won't have a favorite teacher.  Then....really we won't have many becoming teachers because they aren't inspired.

Go read the article--he writes so much better than I do!