Teacher Appreciation: An Insider's Preview

Teacher Appreciation Week is coming up soon, and I'm here with the scoop.

First I'm here with the confession: I was the mom who always intended to do some sort of Pinteresty-awesome teacher gifts and never. quite. got. to. it.  If that's you, it's totally okay. 

So, in lieu of a cute idea, I'll just offer a list of things I think you might need to know.

 (Pinned on my board; link to original broken)

 Ten Things You Never Knew About Teaching (Unless You're a Teacher)

1. We are well-versed in acrononyms:

     CRCT

     CCGPS

     RTI

     WBT

     EOCT

     ETC, ETC, ETC

     And I thought I was cool in the 4th grade when I knew what NASA meant.

2. We can make complicated things simple.  For example, when we teach the state-mandated anti-cyber-bulling lesson in "character education", we can take a three page suggested lesson and boil it down to what it actually means: Be Nice. 

When you are on Twitter, be nice.

When you are on Facebook, be nice.

When you are on Instagram, delete all your duck-face pictures and ...be nice.

See?  Complicated things made simple.

Which leads me to 

3. We don 't write the curriculum. We just teach it.

4. We don't mind being held accountable for our own work.  We have a problem with being held accountable for other people's work, like a student who throws the standardized test by "racing" to see if he can fill in all the bubbles in under 10 minutes.  (True story.)  "Pay for performance" sounds great on paper, but in practice it makes about as much sense as holding dentists responsible for whether their patients floss. 

5. All the scissors, suckers, stickers, pencils, etc.  in your child's class were probably purchased by the teacher out of her own pocket.  She may have purchased notebooks for students who showed up without any school supplies in August.   (Incidentally, in an effort to "tax the rich," and make them "pay their fair share", our small tax credit that reimbursed some of those funds will disappear next year.  Just sayin'.)

6. Middle school students are hormones with feet.  Some of us go home to our own little hormonal darlings, and then we look in the mirror and have hot flashes.  We do lots of hormones. 

7. We know many parents believe their children are brilliant and special.

We might agree.  Or not. ;-)

But we know that what most parents want is for their children to just be normal.  

The good news is they probably are.  

8. We wonder why we are supposed to differentiate and offer choices and recognize unique learning styles in students...and then give them a one-size-fits-all standardized assessment.  Yeah.

9.Our children have to hear about school all the time. Mine wish I'd give the summer planning a rest, but that never happens.

10.   If you've got any great, Pinteresty ideas about teacher gifts, share with me... and help me remember to get them together for my kids' teachers!

  Be blessed, 

Ginger