Teachers, they have the power to do so much good and can shatter a child.....

I for the most part was exposed to a number of great teachers, people who had ideals for the good of children.  They gave far more than they got from being a teacher.  They molded the future generations minds and helped us to do and be better.  They for the most part were as different from one another as could be.  A truly good teacher is a unique individual with the spirit of loving teaching ingrained in their bones.  My Booboo wants to be a teacher and I think that she might just have the special spark that it takes to be a wondrous teacher.  I can remember some of the teachers I had over the years.  I went to 13 schools, so unlike the child that can tell you all the teachers they had from k to 12th, that were teachers in the community for a life time, my children have this, I did not. I can remember the very special ones and the very bad ones.  My kindergarten teacher was an older woman who had retired from teaching and was a foster parent.  She so wanted the children in her neighborhood to have pre-school learning, not like now where there is really pre-school, but schooling before first grade.  She was a remarkable woman, she taught me how to read before I went to public school.  She taught us how to read phonetically.  I was later told by a teacher in high school, that that was the wrong way to teach a kids to read as it made bad spellers.  Well I am a bad speller, for sure, but I did have the ability to have read all of Charles Dickens by the 5th grade so if the trade off is reading early, with hunger and passion for it, or spelling correctly let me have the early reading every time.  He taught me how to spell in high school so it all worked out in the end anyway.  My first and second grade teacher was a remarkable woman, she wanted to follow her class all the way up to junior high and was working on it.  She loved us all so and was so in tune with us that we were well on our way to being a remarkable class but she went on vacation to Glacier Park in the summer between second and third grade.  She was killed in a car wreck, we lost so much.  It was devastating to all of us in our class.  It was very hard to be a third grader that year.  The new teacher was a first year teacher, she was young inexperienced and I have animosity for her to this day.  She had no real compassion for us children that had lost a dear person in our lives.  I loved show and tell, my dad just happened to have a lot of kids and needed the meat he could harvest from the forest.  I know it is poaching now, but we never wasted any of the meat, and we didn't go hungry.  I, needless to say, liked telling about the deer the daddy shot, and a college educated know it all jumped to the "logical" conclusion that I was a liar.  I told about my daddy shooting a deer ever show and tell time.  I was that terrible child that lied all the time, only thing was is that I never lied once. I have never really been a liar and most people who know me know that that is something I just don't do and if I do, don't do well.  You don't have to question if I am gossiping about you because I already took it to you and said it to your face, gossiping is a sin, lying is a sin, saying it to your face is not.  I digress.  My teacher was as sure as she could be that I had lied all seventeen times I told that my daddy shot a deer, I hadn't not once but a young inexperience teacher made a big mistake she branded me a liar and couldn't stand me and was mean to me for it.  She couldn't even bring herself to see me as anything but that lying child.  I have had many other teachers and some of them wonderful and some not worth the check they drew.

I think that there is not a profession more noble than a teacher, the good ones are worth their weight in gold and more.  The ones that were never any good, or have become worn out and no longer any good are the bane of our public school systems.  I think the when teacher begins to have their favorites that is natural, people well and truly have affinities for others but when a teacher favors one child over another and it becomes bullying that teacher is useless and a shame to her profession.  When a teachers see two children talking and only one child is disciplined that is wrong, when some children are allowed to talk and whisper because she especially likes them but disciplines another child every time they open their mouth because she doesn't like them she is a bully and she is bulling a child.  No teacher has the right to play favorites in a negative manner, a teacher that can't control themselves from that is an ineffective and useless teacher.  I think that a teacher that would say to their students "Do as you are told" instead of "Do as I ask" has a problem with her thinking.   I think that some of the best older teachers were once young teachers, with rose colored glasses, that thought teaching was an ideological dream they read about in a book. They have just practiced their craft, learned about the realities of teaching and still have the ideological dream it has just been tinselled and it is now a true calling that is the best quality in a good teacher.  I know several of them and thank God everyday for their devotion to my children.  I just wish that the bad teachers would be honest with themselves, or maybe actually have some children of their own, which sometimes helps them be that good teacher they want to be, or at least spend some time getting to know children.  Thinking you love children and want to spend hours and hours with them is a stark reality some people never understand until they have to do it day in and day out.  Spending time with children takes a special person, a teacher, a mother, a parent or sometimes it takes a person that knows when they have to have time away from children and get a nanny.  Children are a lot of work whether you are the teaching mother or the teacher, but it is not something you can just do out of the chute, it takes lots of work, lots of trial and error, and lots of patience. Some teachers are alot like a well meaning friend that has an opinion on how you should discipline your child, they know, with not an ounce of experience, just how is should be done, know any of those? I do more than I can shake a stick at.  Not everyone that wants to be an at home mom or a teacher is cut out for it, the trick is knowing when to stay and when it is time to go.  Over staying can have devastating consequences, children can not take your lapses into emotional or physical abuse with out long term effects.  Knowing when to walk away, and knowing it is always an option, and if you don't or don't know when to use it you are not in the right profession teacher or parent..... tomorrow.