PA Cyber

Job Shadowing
Elementary School Teacher

Brittany Haddock
English 10
Mrs. Mangan
4/26/15

Being a teacher can be hard work. One would have to know how to publically speak (a thing that many people are afraid of), know how to interact with children or young adults, and have the patience to teach something that a student has no clue how to do. There are many more things that make a teacher’s job hard, but at the end, it is very rewarding. A teacher is a thing that not everyone can be; it takes a special person to be a teacher. They are teaching the ones who will eventually have the world on their shoulders, after all.
A teacher cannot simply slack off and think that they can get away with it. If one day goes wrong for the class, the entire year will be put off. Teachers plan ahead as far as their lesson goes, as a lot can go into teaching students a lesson in class (”Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning” 4). It requires a lot of self restraint to stand on one’s feet for seven hours and teach a group of, on average, twenty-five students (“Class Size” 1). Not every person in the world can keep twenty-five children paying attention and actively participating in a subject. It’s especially hard to get a student who doesn’t really like a certain subject to participate, but special teachers can get them to love the subject, even if they thought that they were horrible at it and hated it before. Not everyone can do that.
A teacher doesn’t have a seven hour work day, either. A teacher has to do many things on their free time that correlates with their work, like grading tests, planning lessons, and so forth. Some teachers have to spend their entire weekend grading things, such as high school teachers who can have around six classes of twenty-five students. That’s 150 students! Grading 150 tests, homework, and so on can be very taxing, but a teacher still gets it done because they have to. A homework or test cannot just be ungraded.
Specifically, a kindergarten teacher has to make sure that nobody is fooling around. Most five and six year olds are rambunctious, and it isn’t uncommon to see a little girl or boy slacking off and coloring when they should be doing math or reading. They have to captivate them and inspire them to have a passion for learning; a passion for learning is one of the greatest things anyone could have, according to Mrs. Potts, and kindergarten teachers have to instill that. A young child like that is very impressionable, and a good experience as a kindergartener can cause many great experiences as a first grader, second grader, and so forth. “By five years of age your child begins to internalize your values: what’s right for you becomes right for her. Your values, virtuous or not, become part of your child.” (“Raising a Moral Child” 3) It is obviously very important to instill positive reinforcements when children are learning, especially as a kindergarten teacher.
A kindergarten teacher has to truly love kids. That might seem obvious, but some teachers become teachers because they think the schooling would be easy and that it was just glorified babysitting. It really isn’t, as Mrs. Potts explained to me. It’s so much more than just babysitting, and the even notion of that makes her laugh. Teachers aren’t babysitters, but they do teach children what is right and what is wrong, and they do teach valuable life skills along with whatever lesson they are teaching.
Teachers can be one of the most influential things in a child’s life, and it’s important to respect them. It’s so strange that teachers are often ridiculed and teased for their job, when they are literally teaching the next wave of adults, the ones who will be running the world when they grow up. Almost everyone in the United States have had an education as well; why would they be mocking someone that they had to spend about 13 years (or more, if they were held back or went to college) with that taught them everything they