TEACHERS - Union Thugs or exemplars ?

Teachers used to teach their students Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmatic. Children learned when that was what school was all about.

Now teachers:

• -have to be the parents because the parents are too busy being their children's best pal, bestie, BFF;
• have to teach children socially acceptable behavior because the parent BFF's refuse to. It would ruin the friendship;
• have to teach self discipline because the children's parental BFF's allow them to be free spirits because control is not a friend thing;
• have to teach morality, values, and right from wrong because the students' parental BFF's and churches just don't;
• have to play the role of policeman in school because parents and those in charge of school do little to teach the students self control and social behavior;
• have to put into practice every unfunded mandate invented by politicians to make themselves look good, although they really have no idea what teaching is like;
• have to comply with every hair brained idea that someone comes up with claiming it will make children perform better;
• have to be prepared to perform physical and psychological first aid;
• have to face constant criticism from people whose only motivation is to promote their own talk shows or political careers;
• have to buy supplies for their classrooms from their own pockets because those in charge cut the budgets without consulting them and then expect great results after cutting necessities.
• take the blame for any failures in education even though they not only did not support the latest craze, by actually pointed out why it would fail from the beginning.

Teachers are maligned by those who find doing so is profitable.

They have to implement programs that exist only to make money for the companies who design them and the salesmen who sell them to a school board who just cannot admit that they don't have all the answers and grab at whatever they think will make it look like they know what they are doing. Most of these programs have such a need to be justified, that rather than have time to actually teach children the teacher is expected to fill out forms and generate paperwork so the school district can have something to show as a way to appear to be doing what is best for children.

Teachers have been considered union thugs because, besides fighting for the proper education of children, they want to be treated like the professionals they are, not like they were the school marm on Little House on the Prairie.

And after all this it is now being suggested that teachers should be trained to act as armed guards and first responders in the event that someone may enter a school building with a gun.

School districts cannot afford basic classroom materials or the Professional Development programs teachers request, but they now seem to be able to afford guns and training so people can keep their assault weapons.

So on the one hand they are maligned as thugs, but then it is suggested they be armed.

It has now become standard procedure that when a social problem is recognized by the public, it is the teacher who is expected and required to be the one to handle it.
A novel idea might be to let the teachers teach without all those extra assignments.