http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e58yBAX5UUU
This is what a teacher looks like at the beginning of the year. (Show first picture) Put together, confident, knowledgeable, and full of enthusiasm. This is what we look like at the end of the year. Scraggly, worn out, bloodshot, and hanging by a thread.
Today I am going to reveal to you the secret of how teachers put themselves back together during the summer so we can appear like this...on the first day of school. Because I am a teacher I can speak for all teachers as a whole and even though these are top-secret plans, the world needs to know.
At the end of the year, I must confess, most of us look like this, if not worse. Our eyes are bloodshot and caffeine is the only means of keeping them open. We hold our clocks like our life depends on it, and biting our tongues is the only way to keep from screaming out loud. Our clothes hang at odd angles and towards the end, we just do not match anymore. It may be because we have succumbed to sleeping at the school to assure we show up for work. Don't tell your kids, but we hide our mattresses in the staff bathrooms wake up 10 minutes before class, flush our head in the toilet and slick our hair back.
Sounds pretty pathetic, I know. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why don't we just quit, give up, or run for the hills.
And the secret reason why we endure this pain all year....Because we are waiting for one moment. One moment. We wait for it all year and it is the reason we allow ourselves to turn into this monster.
That moment is when the students have left our classrooms for the last time, walked down the halls for the last time, and are pushed out the front doors. The principal locks the door and every teacher in the building sits quiet and still, waiting to hear the final click of the door. Then there is a roar heard around the school and possibly around the world. Like you have never heard...unless you have joined in one. We live for that moment. We breathe for that moment. We teach for that moment. This one moment represents our freedom for the next blissful months.
So now that the doors are locked, the classrooms have closed, and all teachers have run as fast as they could to the nearest exit, what becomes of teachers during the summer? Alot of people assume they know what teachers do during the summer months. I took a survey on Facebook asking friends what they think teachers do during the summer. Here are some of the assumptions that I saw: We plan for the next year (Ha), we find a hobby, we study our in-coming student profiles and learn the best ways to teach them. We watch magic school bus and become international spies.
The only one that sounded close was the one Sonya wrote. She said I think that teachers sit in a lonely closet...banging their heads against the wall because they know the school year will begin in 11-12 weeks and they will have to repeat the next 9 1/2 months. Some teachers actually spend their whole summer doing this very thing. But the difference is (show picture 2) they look like this picture....all the time. As most think, we are not in our classrooms planning or looking at new student profiles, or heaven forbid having teacher conferences. That would be committing career suicide. We absolutely cannot walk into that school without our eyes burning out, skin melting, or legs snapping backwards to a praying position.
So how do the other teachers, including me, turn out looking like this (show picture 1) at the beginning of a new school year when they looked like this (show picture 2) only months previous. Today I am revealing super-sonic secrets of the teacherhood. What is said in this room must stay in this room. I must put you under oath. If you are in agree-ance with keeping the super-sonic secrets of the teacherhood raise your right hand. All opposed...don't let the door hit you on your way out.
Ok now that you are all under oath, I can now reveal to you the Super-sonic Secrets of the teacherhood. The first and most important word teachers need to learn is treatment. Yes, treatment. It's a broad word, but the treatment we undergo is extreme. We have so many things we have to do to return to our natural beauty. Not all teachers do the same treatments, but we do as many as our small summers allow. They keep cutting our freedom short each year and so some treatments are ignored. Reluctance to follow complete treatment may cause wrinkles, multiple gray hairs in each hair pore, slide of the eyes, or even an endless wrinkled shirt in the morning less than halfway through the year. Thank goodness we are paid all summer to prevent us from going bankrupt from all of these massive surgeries.
Our most major surgery is the face lift. We have to force our faces back into smiles and cut all of our worry wrinkles away. (Yes, now you know why I look the way I do all year.) We spend hours in the sauna and on the massage bed to relax the nerves we have not taken care of all year. We have blood transfusions to move the blood from our feet from standing all day to the proper parts of the body. All gray hairs are plucked from our heads, nails are filed down to look normal, and white paint is infused into our eyes to cover the bloodshot red. We are sent to scream rooms where we are allowed to scream as loud as we want. I usually take my student's pictures with me to invoke more feeling into mine. We re-tattoo our faces with make-up and receive laser hair-removal for all visible ankles, wrists, and other unmentionables.
When we are not in treatment, we are usually on the toilet, relieving our poor bladders that have not had enough breaks during the school year. While we are on the toilets for many hours, we read as many books that we can, as our brains have emptied of all knowledge or wit. We must re-read to become educated once more. If not in the toilet, we are in the doctor's office with back-logged orders of prescriptions for diseases and ailments we have caught from sickly children.
Now our families cannot be forgotten, for they have been forgotten all year because of this jail...I mean job. Our schedules are very full, but we do eat meals with them. Actually really long meals. We allow ourselves two to three hours for 2 meals seeing as we have so much time to make up for all of the lost meals we have had during the fiscal year. Only our kids and spouses seem annoyed. We relish every soggy noodle.
Now you may think our schedules and procedures are bizarre but they have worked for hundreds of years. No teacher survives without them. Do you remember that teacher who had a breakdown halfway through the year...she forget a treatment or two.
This is what a teacher looks like at the beginning of the year. (Show first picture) Put together, confident, knowledgeable, and full of enthusiasm. This is what we look like at the end of the year. Scraggly, worn out, bloodshot, and hanging by a thread.
At the end of the year, I must confess, most of us look like this, if not worse. Our eyes are bloodshot and caffeine is the only means of keeping them open. We hold our clocks like our life depends on it, and biting our tongues is the only way to keep from screaming out loud. Our clothes hang at odd angles and towards the end, we just do not match anymore. It may be because we have succumbed to sleeping at the school to assure we show up for work. Don't tell your kids, but we hide our mattresses in the staff bathrooms wake up 10 minutes before class, flush our head in the toilet and slick our hair back.
Sounds pretty pathetic, I know. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why don't we just quit, give up, or run for the hills.
And the secret reason why we endure this pain all year....Because we are waiting for one moment. One moment. We wait for it all year and it is the reason we allow ourselves to turn into this monster.
That moment is when the students have left our classrooms for the last time, walked down the halls for the last time, and are pushed out the front doors. The principal locks the door and every teacher in the building sits quiet and still, waiting to hear the final click of the door. Then there is a roar heard around the school and possibly around the world. Like you have never heard...unless you have joined in one. We live for that moment. We breathe for that moment. We teach for that moment. This one moment represents our freedom for the next blissful months.
So now that the doors are locked, the classrooms have closed, and all teachers have run as fast as they could to the nearest exit, what becomes of teachers during the summer? Alot of people assume they know what teachers do during the summer months. I took a survey on Facebook asking friends what they think teachers do during the summer. Here are some of the assumptions that I saw: We plan for the next year (Ha), we find a hobby, we study our in-coming student profiles and learn the best ways to teach them. We watch magic school bus and become international spies.
The only one that sounded close was the one Sonya wrote. She said I think that teachers sit in a lonely closet...banging their heads against the wall because they know the school year will begin in 11-12 weeks and they will have to repeat the next 9 1/2 months. Some teachers actually spend their whole summer doing this very thing. But the difference is (show picture 2) they look like this picture....all the time. As most think, we are not in our classrooms planning or looking at new student profiles, or heaven forbid having teacher conferences. That would be committing career suicide. We absolutely cannot walk into that school without our eyes burning out, skin melting, or legs snapping backwards to a praying position.
So how do the other teachers, including me, turn out looking like this (show picture 1) at the beginning of a new school year when they looked like this (show picture 2) only months previous. Today I am revealing super-sonic secrets of the teacherhood. What is said in this room must stay in this room. I must put you under oath. If you are in agree-ance with keeping the super-sonic secrets of the teacherhood raise your right hand. All opposed...don't let the door hit you on your way out.
Ok now that you are all under oath, I can now reveal to you the Super-sonic Secrets of the teacherhood. The first and most important word teachers need to learn is treatment. Yes, treatment. It's a broad word, but the treatment we undergo is extreme. We have so many things we have to do to return to our natural beauty. Not all teachers do the same treatments, but we do as many as our small summers allow. They keep cutting our freedom short each year and so some treatments are ignored. Reluctance to follow complete treatment may cause wrinkles, multiple gray hairs in each hair pore, slide of the eyes, or even an endless wrinkled shirt in the morning less than halfway through the year. Thank goodness we are paid all summer to prevent us from going bankrupt from all of these massive surgeries.
Our most major surgery is the face lift. We have to force our faces back into smiles and cut all of our worry wrinkles away. (Yes, now you know why I look the way I do all year.) We spend hours in the sauna and on the massage bed to relax the nerves we have not taken care of all year. We have blood transfusions to move the blood from our feet from standing all day to the proper parts of the body. All gray hairs are plucked from our heads, nails are filed down to look normal, and white paint is infused into our eyes to cover the bloodshot red. We are sent to scream rooms where we are allowed to scream as loud as we want. I usually take my student's pictures with me to invoke more feeling into mine. We re-tattoo our faces with make-up and receive laser hair-removal for all visible ankles, wrists, and other unmentionables.
When we are not in treatment, we are usually on the toilet, relieving our poor bladders that have not had enough breaks during the school year. While we are on the toilets for many hours, we read as many books that we can, as our brains have emptied of all knowledge or wit. We must re-read to become educated once more. If not in the toilet, we are in the doctor's office with back-logged orders of prescriptions for diseases and ailments we have caught from sickly children.
Now our families cannot be forgotten, for they have been forgotten all year because of this jail...I mean job. Our schedules are very full, but we do eat meals with them. Actually really long meals. We allow ourselves two to three hours for 2 meals seeing as we have so much time to make up for all of the lost meals we have had during the fiscal year. Only our kids and spouses seem annoyed. We relish every soggy noodle.
Now you may think our schedules and procedures are bizarre but they have worked for hundreds of years. No teacher survives without them. Do you remember that teacher who had a breakdown halfway through the year...she forget a treatment or two.
- Elizabeth Cottrell Go to the bathroom whenever I need. Read fun books. Last three summers, I've moved house. All of the dr. appointments I don't get to do during the year. Get more than 6 hours of sleep. Walk my dog more. Go for a bike ride. Play on the Wii.
- Kate Michaelis Nielsen Go for walks, make lesson plans, go swimming, make lesson plans, watch movies, make more lesson plans. Do you see a pattern? Lol14 hours ago via mobile · Like
- Elizabeth Cottrell Shhhh Kate---don't you know we only work for 9 months? **tongue planted --firmly-- in cheek**14 hours ago · Unlike · 1
- Michelle Kap Have a Downton Abbey marathon followed by a Lord of the Rings marathon.14 hours ago via mobile · Like
- Michelle Greenwell Jacobson I've been deep cleaning my house and trying to organize. I also picked up another job that I do 2-3 days a week. Just keeping busy but enjoying sleeping in... lol13 hours ago via mobile · Like
- Ashley Cason Ha, I have three kids unwind us not a word used very often..... We stay outside and away from the house as much as possible, swim, lay at the park. Clean my house do no teachery things for like a week; just turn it off for a few days.13 hours ago via mobile · Like
- Rachel Lee I read stuff I actually WANT to read...it's wonderful13 hours ago via mobile · Like · 1
- Jacquie Stebar Erickson Still work on lesson plans, try to find new ways to make what I teach applicable, go on vacations, sleep, get back in shape...
- Cornwall Stampede Clean house, remodel, go on trips... You know I started couponing, so that is different and actually kinda fun.
- Jennifer Dowdy Find your truth & live it.13 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 1
- Kimberly Lundgren Read all the books that pile up on my shelf and do all the things I put off during the year.
- Linda Bouch Hike, hike and hike!11 hours ago via mobile · Like
- Jesika May I nanny all summer long but besides that.... Enjoy the sunshine, read a lot, adventure outdoors, plan out & research new strategies and reorganize all my teacher stuff.
It sounds like you should look for a new job. I am a teacher and love it.
ReplyDeleteNope...its my calling. The topic for this speech is a satire. I know exactly where I stand.
ReplyDelete