On a field trip to the Cincinnati Enquirer
with one of my first sixth-grade classes
Almost 3,000 folks read this tribute to teachers since I first published it at the end of the 2015 school year. I am reposting it to honor those educators who made it through yet another 185 grueling days.
“Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.” Dr. Haim Ginott
“I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.” Lily Tomlin
“Summer: The time of the year when teachers can go to the bathroom when they need to.” Heidi McDonald
If you suspect that teachers are as thrilled about the last day of school as the kids,you’re right. The first morning after the last day of school, I used to wake up and think, “What am I worried about? Ohhhh, that’s right. Nothing!”
Much admired principal, Patty Falk, a teacher of teachers
My dear former (fabulous) principal, Patty Falk, said it’s like you have a Rolodex in your head, and all night long it spins and then stops on some task you have yet to do.
Teachers’ mornings are early and, despite what some people may think, the hours are long, and no way do you get June, July, and August off. There are stacks of papers to grade and increasingly larger stacks of nonsensical paperwork to complete. The job is exhausting due to the constant decision-making and the multi-tasking and the competing demands, and, for primary teachers, the sitting on tiny chairs. It always amused me when parents were so desperate for the kids to get back to school after a holiday. I’d think, try thirty of them!
My colleagues at John Foster Dulles Elementary School ~ circa 1999
Teachers all over the world are exhaling. They’ve been holding their breaths for ten months, waiting for some disaster to strike: losing control of that nightmare third bell class, missing the deadline for submitting grades, sitting at his or her desk when an administer walks by (instead of strutting around the classroom, presumably saving the world), or using that damn EpiPen during the zoo field trip.
Teachers know that every day they make a difference, be it good or bad, and when they look back over the school year, faces appear, faces of children who were hungry, tired, angry, confused, or scared; teachers worry that they weren’t patient enough or challenging enough or empathic enough. For most teachers, it’s not the successes that first spring to mind, it’s all the times they weren’t enough.
Teachers at Oakdale Elementary School ~ circa 1977
There is never enough teacher to go around. It is not humanly possible to do all that needs to be done for a classroom of students, so at the end of the day– or the year, or a career– teachers know that they’ve fallen short.
A good teacher doesn’t need a battery of state-mandated, time-wasting, morale busting, misleading tests to know which kids still don’t read well or can’t count change or write cogent sentences. Teachers understand the bell-shaped curve and, therefore, know that every child will not/should not go to college, that every kid doesn’t need to learn algebra, that for some kids, school is just a 13-year handicap. It’s always amusing when you read a headline that 50% of students in some targeted school are performing “below average.” Well, yes.
Teaching has always been hard, but it is even harder today, so hard that I know I could not do it anymore. There have always been kids who’ve come to school with baggage; family dysfunction might include poverty, incarceration, mental illness, drug addiction, neglect, abuse. In seven hours a day, schools are expected to undo the sixteen hour home “curriculum,” and the school’s supposed success is published in the odious “School Report Card” which holds schools accountable, not just for test scores, but also attendance, retention, and suspension. School teachers are the only ones held accountable when students don’t perform well, even though kids have an army of “teachers” inside their homes, teaching them God-only-knows what.
School’s out forever! My last day of school
Teaching used to be more fun for the teachers and the students. During my career, I didn’t know on the first day of school what I’d be teaching every day. The curriculum was permeable: it let the kids and the world in.
Maybe the kids were into The Hunger Games, so that’s what we’d read instead of Where the Red Fern Grows. Maybe one class just didn’t get how to simplify fractions, so you had to spend a couple days backtracking and practicing math facts and factors. A war began (because there is always a war), so we’d spend some time learning pertinent issues and geography and write about our feelings. We took fabulous educational field trips: to the courthouse and jail; to an Indian restaurant, a mosque and a synagogue; U.C, Xavier University, and Cincinnati State; the Great American Ballpark.
Teachers are now constrained and pressured by rigid academic calendars and the godawful tests. Many schools have eliminated “extras” like Everybody Counts, school plays, field trips, hamster weddings, and recess (even in kindergarten!).
What hasn’t changed, though, is what makes a great teacher tick. Michelle Red Elk, a middle school librarian, posted this on Facebook:
Michelle Red Elk
“Every day I see the people who work in schools do amazing things for kids. Yes, they teach them the required material, and the testing drama floors us all, but I am talking about the other things that are not measured and reported on. Many students have NO support outside of school, so these are places of refuge from the super drama they call home. You can feel in your heart that there is nobody at home even looking at them and nobody giving them loving care. Some of these kids push the staff each day, and it just wears them down. Even then…school staff looks them in the eyes, buys lunch, listens to the happy stories, listens to the stories that make you want to throw up, helps arrange free or reduced lunch, sends food home with kids who otherwise would not eat outside these walls, speaks to them with a loving voice, picks off the lice, accepts them for who they are right now, launders their clothing, purchases clothing and supplies for them, honors their strengths, uses personal time to stay after and come early, stands as a stable adult-who is simply just here each day carrying on, shines a light on their potential, remembers their birthday, asks about their beloved pets, counsels them, asks in on their family, tells them they are cared for, encourages them to go beyond, coaches them in sports, and a million other small and big things.” (reprinted with permission from the author)
Thanks to all of the teachers who still know what is important, even in the wake of the assaults made on institutions of learning and educators. In particular, I want to acknowledge my daughter, Stacey Lingo, who just finished her thirteenth year of teaching seventh grade history. Her dad and I couldn’t be more pleased and proud that she has chosen this demanding, important career. (It’s kind of the family business.) I suspect few people know how much she cares, how much she studies, how hard she tries, and how many evenings and weekends she spends in her classroom to be the best that she can be for her students.
Oh, one more thing. You know what teachers are thinking on the last day of school? The upcoming first day of school, and how they’re going to do it better.
I am anxious to hear from those of you who are teachers about how you feel at the end of the school year.
circa 1978 at Oakdale Elementary School
Below is a poem I wrote about the seemingly mundane annual picture day. But teachers are always teaching.
Picture Day
“She’s the teacher
so she knows which girl
can’t sit ladylike in the front row.”
My mother is in the front row,
last one on the right. She could sit ladylike!
First day of school for Stacey (first grade) and Allison (kindergarten)
CLICK HERE to read What Makes a Good Teacher? Not what “they” say
CLICK HERE to imagine the influence of one teacher. Seriously, click here! It’s awesome!
Copyright © 2015 Sandy Lingo, All Rights Reserved.
So insightful! I learned a new word today…cogent. I loved the part about 50 percent are below average! Keep writing!
Oh Sandy, I remember when I first heard you read an essay you wrote about teaching middle school at Women Writing. I knew that moment that we would be the closest of friends. I wish we had taught together…we would have provided the necessary insight and humor to keep us sane. So many students’ lives are better today because of you. This blog needs to be sent further into the world! Thank you, as always, for your thoughts.
As usual this is dead on, glad to hear you are as proud of Stacy as we are our Tyler for choosing our family business.
Bravo!
I love this, Sandy. So many read backs, because so much beautiful language. Wasn’t there a bumper sticker something to the effect that “teachers touch the generations” ? The best of us weren’t “strutting around saving the world,” we were showing up with everything we had and never feeling it was enough. Also love the passage from Michelle Red Elk whom I just happened to meet this past Sunday briefly at a book signing. Thank you for the heart and soul you put into the world …
Nailed it!
Thank you! I just had to share this on my FB page. I am blessed to have a teacher sister and brother in law who give of their heart and souls to their students, as well as shoes, clothing, food, and love; all of those things that children should receive at home, but do not! I have watched them give of themselves until their hearts break because they can send them home with these essentials, but can’t bring each child home to be loved and nurtured in a true home environment. You have done it again!
Sandy, I loved this piece. Being partial to poetry, I especially reacted to that…blotting a tear as I type. Great see in you – and Teri – at the Fringe.
Sandy, after all these years of retirement I can still remember the last day of school, but I also remember the anticipation at the beginning of a new year of school. My problems with students were simple compared to what teachers face today, families were more together–no gum and line up quietly in the hall!!! I also remember your first year of subbing at COH–I knew then you’d be what you are.
Jane
Brilliant!!!
Thanks Sandy. It took me an entire book to say what you just so perfectly said.
Linda
Thanks, Sandy. It’s been more than a decade since I said good-bye to ‘the system’ but your words put me right back there. Teachers (the good ones like you and my daughter Robin, e.g.) are my heroes!
Teachers have always been my heroes. My admiration was kind of “surface” until I became a school secretary – boy, did I learn a lot! My admiration turned into worship and I only wished I was able to be a teacher – the kind that I was privileged to work with – you, especially, Sandy. There is really no way to thank a teacher for the gift he or she gives every single day, but I still have the opportunity to try with my grandchildren. They just had their last day of school on Friday. And I’m the grandma who shows up at school often enough that teachers recognize me. 🙂
Teaching really is the Lingo Family Business, and it was a business that I know I could never enter. The dedication, hard work, endless hours, oh and the tests – the tests!, would be too much for me. I am ever-impressed with Stacey, Mom, Dad, and Grandma!
A touching piece. My 8th grade science teacher set me on the right path for which I am truly grateful or else I might have been a delinquent. My fourth Irish teacher (a nun also) brought so much joy into my life that year with her enthusiasm and fun approach to teaching. God bless all teachers.
I completed my final ‘last day of school’ on May 29th. It was difficult to say goodbye. Although I became discouraged and frustrated by the ridiculous reforms put in place by non-educators, I loved the challenge of moving my students forward academically as well as socially. Unfortunately, in our current education system if you can’t assign a number to this progress, it doesn’t mean much.
However, I was fortunate to teach before the assessment mania took over. How lucky I was able to team teach with you for those years when you were at Dulles Elementary. I learned so much from you, Sandy!
P.S. Loved Patty Falk’s Rolodex analogy. I will give you the 21st century equivalent. Being a teacher is like being a computer with hundreds of tabs open and running at the same time.
We were so lucky to teach when we did. It was such a different job then. Those years at Dulles were professionally satisfying and inspirational. Love your 21st century analalogy. You will be amazed how free you’ll feel in retirement that you don’t have to care so much.
I loved teaching scienceand history. I miss the kids and the camraderie among the faculty. I don’t miss the metastasizing paperwork, the narrowing and increasind lock step of the curriculum and the small number of sociopathic parents whose thug spawn are allowed to ruin the education of the other children because administrations are afraid to confront them and their schoolbus chasing lawers who promise them money for sueing the schools. I am now retired but miss the start of school each year.
I totally agree! I retired five years ago. I feel like I taught during the golden age of education. I had so much autonomy. I was able to design my lessons to meet the needs and interests of my students. Overall, I had the support and respect of the parents. I miss those days. I feel sorry for my daughter who has 25 years left in her career. I love the term, “metastasizing paperwork.” How does that help kids? Thank you so much for reading and responding. And thank you for your service.
Great post, Sandy. I am a teacher approaching retirement and your words ring so true. I won’t miss the bureaucratic bullsh**, but I will miss the kids.
Hi Sandy, I love ALL your pieces, so much wisdom, a little humor and lots of sass! Will try to meet up with you soon! Anita