Teaching Sucks - But We Love It Anyway! a Little Insight Into the Profession You Think You Know

Book excerpt: The Fire Rises. And it is time for the voices of teachers to be heard. "I find it fascinating, and a bit insulting," confides Frank Stepnowski, the iconoclastic author of Why Are All the Good Teachers Crazy and S.C.R.E.W.E.D., An Educational Fairytale, "that so many people feel so enabled to criticize teachers. Folks get their homes repaired multiple times, but they don't automatically think they could be construction workers, plumbers, etc. People and their family members undergo surgeries and visit hospitals, but they don't instantly assume they could be doctors. I could go on and on and yet, because they went to school, or have children in school, legions of people feel like they know what it is to be a teacher. They're wrong; and the evidence is in both the children they send us, and the fact that they stand idle, ignorant to so many "educational" decisions being made about our children that could irreversibly damage future generations." Teaching Sucks - But We Love It is an unapologetic retaliation to those that would blame teachers exclusively for the ills that plague modern education, a wake-up call to the uninformed masses, and a love letter to those good teachers that continue to fight the good fight in the face of nearly insurmountable odds, in a nation that seems to increasingly devalue their importance.