As a hopeful STEM major, I constantly listen to complaints of how hard the path to achievement is, alongside jabs at other pathways and their apparent lower levels of difficulty.
I’m not making light of the difficulty of a career in the sciences. Trust me, I am constantly exhausted trying to figure out how to finish lab reports, solve equations and draw diagrams. I’ve spent hours studying for tests to earn near the class average of a 54%.
It’s not easy to be a STEM major, but it’s not right to downplay what others go through in their search for a fulfilling career.
I’ve heard how education majors have it the “easiest” whatever that is supposed to mean.
I’ve heard people explain that teaching is their “back up” career if things don’t go well.
It’s time to pay greater respect to our educators. It’s time to thank the people that raised us outside of our homes; the people that never gave up on us even when we were exceedingly difficult to teach.
How people bash elementary educators is beyond me. These people built the foundation of which our entire lives are based on. They taught us how to read, to write, to speak.
They do all this while breaking up fights, consoling crying children and inspiring whimsy and imagination.
A career in education is not for the faint of heart. They deal with kids from heartbreaking backgrounds who need the daily routine of coming school for a chance and a safe retreat.
Every day, a teacher’s patience is tested by every possible frustration that could come about from working with kids.
Not to mention that teachers aren’t taking on their jobs for the money. They face low salaries, yet still, come to work with more passion than much of the working population.
They deal with angry parents, flawed curriculum plans and long hours of forming lesson plans.
Without your teachers, you wouldn’t be able to pursue a career in whatever you want. Our middle school algebra teachers gave us the fundamental basics with which to continue with advanced calculus and statistics.
If not for our high school biology teachers, we wouldn’t know how to formulate proper hypotheses.
They gave us the foundation all while dealing with our attitudes.
They inspire the doctors, lawyers, architects of the future by providing us with mantras and a hunger for learning.
The utter disrespect I see for the people that put their hearts and souls into shaping our futures is disheartening.
So what can we do about it?
We can be more encouraging of people following their dreams of becoming teachers. We can understand how hard it is to study learning in and of itself.
We can realize that a career in education shouldn’t be a backup. It should only be for those who aspire to be a positive light in the lives of young people.
We can thank the people that stayed after class to explain a simple concept to us, even when we got overly frustrated.
We can write them letters and pay them a visit. We can remain humble and understand who grounded us and grew our roots.
We can voice our opinions and give calls to legislators regarding the education system and the rights of the educators within it.
Most importantly, we can come down off our high horses, and realize that the world needs all types of people.
If you ever want kids, you’ll want people who care about them enough to give them everything they have.
The world needs doctors, lawyers, architects, politicians, teachers, farmers, food science majors; everything under the sun.
We need a wide variety of people to foster an atmosphere of success in our society. And we need that wide variety of people to respect each other a little more.