Teachers: what are they like?!

A useful addition from an expert at walking out in a strop (Brexit)

The press and right wing commentators are having a jolly old time with this question at the moment. Some teachers went on strike and it’s highly inconvenient. Good. That’s the point of a strike. If no one notices then it’s very difficult to get your message across. Many people are striking at the moment because in a country that is reeling from a pandemic, following a stupid decision to leave our biggest trade body, being governed by a bunch of people  that have run out of steam and effective ideas, where inflation is at an all time high and public sector pay freezes over the last ten years haven’t been relaxed, it has all come to a bit of a head. The pimple has been growing, quietly under the skin and now it’s out, oozing and suppurating all over the place. Discontent. Anger and disappointment everywhere. Not just teachers.

But the rhetorical question - what are teachers like - will be wielded in an attempt to undermine any genuine concerns. 

The answer to the question is that teachers are human.

What?

Yep. It’s that simple. Human.

There are also lots of them because people will insist on breeding and expecting someone else to educate the little blighters. 

Teachers  come in all shapes and sizes. They are not all the same. They don’t all believe the same things or act in the same way. 

‘But they’re all loony lefties!’ the right wing press shout from their front pages. 

Nope. There are a spectrum of political beliefs. Obviously, the profession attracts more people that place others before money, specifically those who can’t help themselves. It’s the only way they are able to put the needs of 30 children over their own need to pee (or eat, often). It takes a certain kind of mindset to do that.

There is one trait of many teachers, however that allows this kind of silly talk in the press. This is the tendency to be our own worst enemy. Why does the profession attract so many people with slightly low self esteem?

This need to justify everything that you do, to feel guilty if one child out of thirty falls asleep in your lesson, the need to reinvent the wheel all the time, to insist that the job is worth it, even when it is grinding you down, to buy your own glue sticks, books or lolly sticks (never underestimate the importance of a lolly stick in teaching), to write everything down, to have sleepless nights over the child that smells of weed and screams through most of the day, as though that’s your fault. These things show a level of poor self esteem that you wouldn’t get in banking (or unfortunately, the current government). Bankers would say, “Oh, there’s no glue stick. I won’t stick anything in then.”

The point is that teaching is one of many difficult jobs with workers that are asking for a fairer deal. Don’t be sidetracked, by anyone tapping into their poor self esteem, into believing that they, and the children of this country, aren’t worth more.