Who Wouldn’t Want To Be A Teacher?

I am delighted that teaching is now the most sought after profession in the United States. In the twenty-six years I have been a professional educator, teaching has become a more and more attractive profession. Of course, a majority of the best students at the most elite college are interested in going into the classroom and who can blame them? The way that we treat teachers in the United States is the key to the success of our educational system.

Of course, as everyone knows, teachers have really easy hours. Although class often starts around 8am, teachers get to come in an hour or more earlier to prepare for the day. However, class days often end between 2:30 and 3:30. What a great workday! Of course, most teachers stay after school to work with kids, sponsor clubs and coach sports, call and meet with parents, and attend meetings. Even with all that, most teachers might leave school no later than 6 or 7. And when they get home, they get to take a little bit of school with them and grade student work for a few hours and plan future lessons. What a fantastic daily schedule! And you get summers off to design curriculum, take college courses, and have fun extra jobs to supplement your income and experience!

Many students are attracted to teaching for the status, which may be the wrong reason. Everyone loves teachers. They are praised in the press and lauded in the halls of the legislature. Some college students are only in it for the prestige and teacher training programs must address that. Sure, other countries recruit teachers by paying their way through college and giving them high salaries, but we don’t need that in the United States. The joy and praise heaped on teachers is payment enough.

Teachers not only contribute to society by working with the young, their retirement dollars help ailing state governments. Teachers can feel good that the retirement money taken from their paychecks will be borrowed by the government to pay for many needed projects. Teachers have faith that it will be repaid when they are ready to retire. Since, for many of our younger teachers, that isn’t until age sixty-seven or perhaps older, the whole retirement question might not even matter at all! Besides, who would want to retire from teaching anyway?

Just like the high status, many young people want to go into teaching to strike it rich! The Chicago Sun Times recently reported that some teachers make around $100,000. After teaching for thirty years, students want to make those big bucks. In what other professions can long time veterans with advanced degrees say that they are earning almost six figures?

Of course, the biggest draw to teaching is the kids themselves. Remember what it was like back in high school or middle school? Imagine that all the time! And, for no extra charge, teachers also get to know and love their parents!

The fact is that anyone can be a teacher. After going to the doctor’s office, I performed surgery. I cooked a gourmet meal after eating at a French restaurant. A few visits to the salon and I can do wonders with my hair! If you have been a student, you can be a teacher! No problem!

Teaching isn’t really that hard because there are a battery of tests that tell teachers what students need to learn. Legislators and educrats have made teaching one of the easiest professions around. They have laid out targets in each subject and at each grade level. All teachers have to do is get the kids to score well on the test. What could be easier?

It is no wonder that today’s college students are flocking to be teachers! The way our country promotes teachers is the real reason that America has the best education system in the world!

A Very Tweet School Year!

Classes are over and finals are around the corner; it is time to look back on the 2010-2011 school year. At the end of each class period, my students write a short statement that communicates something important about what we did that day. We publish these statements on the social network site Twitter. Here is a not-so-brief but still edited version of my school year in my students’ tweets:

• First day of high school writing and “My Name.”
• Listen to Sesame Street, discuss and journal.
• Today, we read some OF MICE AND MEN and got our papers back.
• Show don’t tell
• Write a great college essay…be you!
• Dashes, dos and don’ts.
• This video didn’t work, I believe.
• We annotated on our knees.
• Better to start applications sooner than later.
• Bloom Taxonomy questions
• Jigsaw and a blackout!
• We wrote bad essays.
• University of (insert name here).
• We talked about chapter 3 in double circles. Quiz! Balanced book on head.
• Revise! Revise! Revise! The key to a “perfect” essay is the R.R.R. criteria.
• Quizzes make us tired.
• Started ANTHEM in a shortened period and had some time for the Sunday Puzzle.
• Twinkle, Twinkle, little star.
• DISC and your clickers.
• We took a quiz and learned about pronouns, commas, and copyright.
• Talked about Equality’s qualities.
• For every pleasure, there is a pain.
• Learned about quote sandwiches.
• Memoir and looking back.
• “Third and Final Continent” was splendid!
• Swap!
• Analyzed essays and, surprise, a phone went off in a locker outside.
• Discussed graphic novels: comical day.
• Shopping for essays.
• Hodge podge.
• “Thebes is dying, look, her children stripped of pity…”
• Oedipus loves his mother.
• We had an awesome day! Talked about similarities.
• Thesis work: I Want It That Way, YouTube - Backdorm Boys.
• Cucumbers and sweater vests.
• Solved the murder mystery!
• Majors and minors – not chords!
• A bridge to where? To Antigone.
• MAJOR research.
• We worked on grammar, learned about the Joneses, and got the best project!
• Anthology of pros.
• Watched HAMLET Scene 1!
• A regular Monday always has a puzzle.
• Majors aren’t important and mock interview.
• Reverse thesis and the bests for research.
• “I would be fine living in a box on Adams if I am making a difference.” Is there a major for that?
• Fear not thy major, ‘stead search thee as a forest ranger.
• “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
• We wrote about Chris Creed, researched the best and danced (according to Mr. Hirsch).
• End your relationship with Hamlet!
• “Go on.”
• New student, malapropisms, and Chris Creed
• Billy Crystal was meant to play the grave-digger.
• Course Fair!
• Watched the blood bath!
• Theses slips and Yorik!
• Today we played with the talk tix for the first time and discussed the Chris Creed book.
• It’s snowing!
• We need to make a Facebook page for Renee.
• We survived the essay test!
• Santa is not real.
• Explication!
• We tweet to the beat of the poem we roam.
• Memorize, remember, repeat…repeat, remember, memorize…
• Good job (we discussed the end of Chris Creed).
• Bright the sun, shone on this fateful day, poetry recitation.
• Purely Christopher Creed (and puzzle…but that doesn’t count)
• Poetry out loud!
• Stop looking at Twitter and study for your finals!
• We read a poem (together), hacked Infinite Campus, and learned about third quarter.
• Late! Starting our book circles.
• Poems, poems, poems! And final essay rubrics.
• Proposals give us wings and let us soar!
• Started TWELFTH NIGHT.
• Our tweets are better than yours.
• Snow day tomorrow; halls in a frenzy.
• Ken Kesey’s acid bus!
• We wrote in Shakespeare’s language and talked about the book.
• How has this Twitter stream affected our relationships among fourth period English? 250-500 words.
• We made ransom note poems.
• Another snow day. See you on Friday!
• We performed translated versions of Shakespeare.
• Pop tart!
• Studied quotes on note cards, learned about upcoming quizzes, and how Shakespeare coined words.
• Bad, bad, grad speech.
• Found out that the oddest things can be turned into poetry (even articles from newspapers).
• Two roads diverged in a wood & I –I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference. Be sure to put that in your speech.
• Three volunteers. Yeah for bravery!
• Today we summarized Act 4 in comic form and watched TWELFTH NIGHT.
• Ten years from now, I may be in jail.
• Quiz on Act 5, “stock” characters, the Globe and Carmelo Anthony.
• Where is everyone?
• Puns and project work.
• Simon says ...
• Essay contest, no puzzle.
• My apostrophe/Stop being used so wrong/For this angers me #grammarday
• Speeches, screeches, smeaches, beaches, leeches, bleaches, breaches, peaches, niches, squenches,
• Studied the anatomy of TWELFTH NIGHT.
• Puzzles, murder, thesis, oh, my!
• We’re having a fun time starting A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
• No homework over spring break.
• TALE OF TWO CITIES is recalled to life!
• When you don’t know the answer…google!
• Reenacted TALE OF TWO CITIES.
• StageWrite!
• Research, smearsearch (due Friday).
• Qook a tuiz, puzzle, and quoting the Beatles.
• Cantaloupe, antelope. :)
• Post not working, oh the irony!
• We learned about the French Revolution and got our first TALE quizzes back.
• Senior project, day 247
• Mysteries finally being solved in A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
• What’s a place of power that’s nine letters?
• Today was all about Tale and Mr. Hirsch got invited to karaoke with a student!
• Work or freak out…
• We read essays and revised essays.
• If you have less than 100 points, I will be calling home.
• We keep each other safe, so trust your instincts. Don’t forget about senior project!
• Done swapping essays and we got our new assignment.
• Who’s watching you…you will never know.
• Bush pigs in America.
• Don’t text and drive!
• Slaved all period making pictures.
• Products - done. Presentations - video problems. And then there was that hockey incident.
• A fantastic presentation on white privilege!
• Presentation and thank you notes!
• It's TALE OF TWO CITIES day!
• College transitions.
• TALE finished, end of the year is near, only need finals and we are done.
• Course and teacher evaluation. Thank you for flying Senior English.
• Watched some STAR TREK today.
• Working on finals!
• Last day of class, have a sreat gummer!

If you want to see all of my classes’ tweets, go to SeniorEngpd1, SeniorEngpd4, and FroshEngpd2 on Twitter.