On teacher-bashing

(When it came to writing about teacher-bashing, I laboured over what tone to take, or to whom I ought to be addressing myself. The subject matter, which pertains to my career and therefore my entire sense of self, has incited in me a whole host of emotions, including and not limited to anger, frustration, annoyance, shame, and sadness. Then I thought, actually, I am not making myself smaller for other people's sense of comfort while it is my profession that is being ridiculed on social media and in casual conversations by people who have never been in my shoes. Last week's blog talked of leaning into discomfort, which in this case is my fear of putting people’s noses out of joint or ‘sounding like a martyr’, because by embracing the pain and awkwardness that comes with being vulnerable, I choose to let my true self be seen, and that is my aim today.)

I didn’t always want to be a teacher. Infact, the idea repulsed me, and I eye-rolled at anyone for whom teaching was part of their ‘when-I-grow-up’ narrative. Of course my fellow 9-year-olds wanted to be teachers - they spent every single day with one! They saw no other career modelled for them! They were so unoriginal!

Transition Year was where the eye-rolling stopped. (For my foreign readers, TY is like a gap year one can take midway through secondary school.) Part of TY was completing 3 weeks' work experience. The final of those 3 weeks I spent in the school in which my mother taught, with little reason behind the choice other than ‘this will save Mom the bother of dropping me somewhere before work’. I had no designs on the teaching profession at that moment in time. In those 5 days in my former primary, I spent much of my time with a large 4th class, paired with a child who needed a lot of extra help. A shy 10-year-old who struggled with literacy, this boy still used a 0-20 number line for maths despite being surrounded by peers capable of long multiplication. I would walk him through the questions, encourage him to use his number line, or fingers or counters or whatever else we had going, and when he got the answer right, something inside me just… came alive. Trying to put words to it even now is quite difficult and emotional. My main take-home then was: “wow, I helped him work it out, he got there because of me”. And at 16 years of age, I realised, in that moment, that I could reach out and help not just this one child in his learning but many more if I wanted to. And I did. I wanted to very much.

That boy is in his early 20s now. I don’t know where he ended up in life but working in close quarters with him in that classroom filled me with a sense of purpose and responsibility that I still carry with me today. The meaning teaching gives me, on a personal level, is what keeps me coming back with enthusiasm and motivation despite the tough days in between. That’s why, when I see spiteful comments online about teachers, or hear people say - to my face! - how ‘easy’ we have it (the COVID school closures being referred to as ‘extra holidays’, by the way), it kills me. It really does. I don’t know of any teacher who chose this career purely for the time off alone. And anyone for whom this did inform their decision won’t last long, considering how switched on we need to be both on and off the job (spoiler: in teaching, there is no ‘off the job’).

I think having teachers for parents has further reinforced this. There’s the privileged childhood that goes with that, yes, but I also had a view first-hand of what goes on for teachers after the bell rings. Family trips involved my dad taking pictures of geographical features and beginning to plan the subsequent lessons aloud in the process. In many of the school buildings in which my underage music competitions took place, my mom would marvel at the pupils’ artwork on display, snapping photos so she could recreate them with her own class. They frequently thought of their students and how they could enhance their learning even when school was out. Neither I nor my parents got into this gig for the holidays. That I can tell you for sure. Because living for the weekends, half-terms, and summer breaks will not sustain you in this career if that’s the only driving force.

Having to endure generalised, unfair, biased opinions of teachers (as if we are all the same!) is unfortunately part of life in an age where everyone's a critic and has a social media platform, though not all of it happens online. My job is ridiculed by members of my own family, who should be way more understanding given that they have had a front-row seat to the unfiltered reality of teaching, and have also enjoyed the perks that go with having teachers as parents. This makes me wonder what hope there is for someone with no educators in their immediate circle to still have respect for the teaching profession, when my own relatives speak about my job so disparagingly, whether meant as a joke or not.

Concluding paragraph, because this is already a mile-long as is. Before you tear into someone else's profession, think about why you need to do that in the first place. The Twitter trolls with their nasty, needless opinions on all 65,000 teachers in Ireland (because, you know, we are identical, after all) need to turn the lens inward and stop trying to work their shit out on others. Anyone who has a genuine grievance with a teacher or teachers is well within their rights to have that grievance, but nuance is key. And also a topic for a different day. Goodnight and god bless.