The following is a commentary on being a teacher. I received the basics of this in an email with no author given. I stole the original idea and re-worked it (considerably) to try to make it more passionate and telling. Feel free to steal it from me if you wish... use it if you can. (rlh)

      Let me see if I've got this right. You want me to go into that room with all those kids and fill their every waking moment with a love for learning. Not only that, I'm to instill a sense of pride in their own ethnicity, behaviorally modify disruptive behavior, and observe them for signs of abuse, drugs, and T-shirt messages. I am to fight the war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, check their backpacks for guns and raise their self-esteem. I'm to teach them patriotism, good citizenship, sportsmanship, and fair play, how and where to register to vote, how to balance a checkbook, and how to apply for a job. I am to teach them to be loyal, obedient, dutiful, and conforming while teaching them to be analytical and to think for themselves.
       I am to check their heads occasionally for lice, expect 1% to vomit in class during the year, maintain a safe environment, recognize signs of potential antisocial behavior, offer advice, write letters of recommendation for student employment and scholarships, also encourage respect for cultural diversity, gender issues, the disabled, and oh yeah... teach.
       I'm required by my contract to be working, on my own time, summer and evenings, and at my own expense towards extra certification, advance certification, and a master's degree, I am expected to jump through every hoop and climb every obstacle that some of my graduate school professors put in front of me and act like I do not work every day in a demanding, labor intensive occupation because the professor either never taught or forgot what it was like in the classroom. I am to register for classes without advisement because some professors don't answer my phone calls, emails, or notes shoved under their office doors.
      I have to grasp every bureaucratic detail having to do with the change from certification to licensure and make certain I am legal to teach what I am assigned. I'm supposed to sponsor the pep club or the sophomore class, and after school I'm required to attend committee meetings, staff meetings in which the principal drones on and on, wrapped in his own puffy ego, and participate in staff development training to maintain my current certification and employment status. I am to listen to the principal interrupt my teaching time with P.A. announcements and special assemblies that feature inspirational speakers who never taught a day in their lives and who sport egos and arrogance that are inflated to the size of Bill Gates's bank account.
       I am expected to stand by silently while the State Superintendent and the Governor tell me they will punish me if my abused, hungry, and homeless students do not pass the state proficiency tests. I am to never divulge what is on the proficiency tests even though I find items that are incorrect, answers that are wrong, and things that are completely alien to my disadvantaged students' experiences.
       I am expected to honor the integrity of my state's school reform initiatives and forget that they were developed by a committee that was led by a billionaire, cigar-smoking, prep school graduate C.E.O. of a soap-making company who sends his kids to private schools. I am expected to teach in an 80-year old building that is falling apart, has no reliable heating system, has a leaky roof, and has lousy soap in the restrooms. I'm supposed to accept all this while praising the state for tax abatement, tax reduction, and spending billions on highways and state office buildings.
       I am to collect data and maintain all records to support and document our building's progress in the selected state mandated program to assess and upgrade educational excellence in the public schools. I am to write all my lesson plans a week ahead of time and turn them in to a principal who never reads them. I am to be a paragon of virtue larger than life, such that my very presence will awe my students into being obedient and respectful of authority. I am to pledge allegiance to supporting family values, a return to the basics, and my current administration. I am to be held accountable without being allowed to control the things for which I am held accountable for. All the while I'm being told by the media, the politicians, the state and the religious fundamentalists that I am incompetent, lazy, and a godless secular humanist with no moral values.
       I am to pay dues to local, state, and national unions that ignore my real work load, support high stakes testing that has nothing to do with student learning, and won't even let me directly vote on who the state and national officers are. I'm to be loyal and understanding to what the union asks but am to remain silent about some of its leaders treating me worse than most of my school board members.
       I am also to incorporate technology into the learning, but monitor all web sites for appropriateness while providing a personal one-on-one relationship with each student. I am to make sure that technology is infused into my teaching and that all students can use computers while dealing with 30 students and 3 computers. I am to provide them access to internet but ignore that the system is off-line most of the time and that the computers are outdated and that they often either freeze up or crash when they are used.
       I am expected to write I.E.P.'s, make sure students have taken their medicine, and be prepared to deal with epileptic seizures. I am to teach my students that drugs are evil but make certain that they have taken their Ritalin so that they do not act like children. I am to decide who might be potentially dangerous and/or liable to commit crimes in school and who is possibly being abused or molested, knowing I can be sent to jail for not mentioning these suspicions to those in authority while knowing I will be sternly criticized if I am wrong about my suspicions.
       I am to make sure ALL students pass the state mandated testing and all classes, whether or not they attend school on a regular basis or complete any of the work assigned. I am to communicate often with each student's parent by letter, phone, newsletter, and grade card. I'm to do all of this with just a piece of chalk, a computer, some books, a bulletin board, 45 minutes or less of scheduled planning time, a 30-minute lunch period, bus duty, hall duty, cafeteria duty, potty duty, and a big smile... on a starting salary that qualifies my family for food stamps in most states.
       All the stakeholders in education... parents, businessmen, politicians, the PTA, the school board, administrators, church leaders, media, and students... want me to do all of this and expect me to do it without verbalizing any comments, criticisms, or concerns? Ya gotta be kiddin'! If anyone sincerely wants to improve schooling, give the classroom teachers back the control they once had, a voice in their union, a reasonable salary, and a safe, decent place in which to work. Give us the opportunity to be accountable for what we can control, stand back, and watch the power of real reform in action.