I hear all too often that education majors never have any real work, that all we do is learn to point to the board and use the "teacher" voice. But most people don't know that learning to be a teacher is intense mentally, emotionally and socially. Teachers do so many things in the background that don't get noticed and most of the time go unappreciated.
Teachers can't afford to to have bad days or have breakdowns because teachers have to be there for the students everyday, no exceptions. Especially with the younger kids, your teacher keeps order in the classroom, they're your walking, talking dictionary and the only adult in the room absolutely cannot be having a mental breakdown. When students are acting up, you can't curse or tell them the harsh truth, you need to be calm, respectful and bite your tongue when they are being little monsters. You're the problem solver and whatever baggage you have going into work that day you better leave it at the door because kids pick up on everything.
Teachers also need to know pretty much everything, so how can people think education majors don't have any work to do in college? We need to take classes in virtually every subject and be an all around above average student. We need to read book after book about how to speak to children, how to solve problems among students and we need to learn to observe every single student every single day. Teachers should have read every book their students are reading and know the common core forwards and backwards. Education majors need to be the jack of all trades and know something about everything, math, science, history, psychology, everything. When a student asks a question you don't know, it means that you need to study harder and longer because students find it unnacceptable.
The hardest thing about being an education major is knowing that not many people realize all the sacrifices we're going to have to make as teachers. Teachers don't get paid nearly as much as we should, they get complained about and eyes roll when students talk about us. Teachers get emails and phone calls about how badly we suck from overprotective parents and told by our government that we're not good at our jobs.
We know all this as education majors, but we still pursue it because we love our future students through thick and thin. We smile when we think about how we will decorate our classrooms and about the smiles on our student's faces when we read books to them. We aspire to be that teacher that you remember having and knowing that they made you the person you re today. We didn't choose this path for the money or gratitude, two things we know we don't get much of, we do it because we want to bring out the joy in learning. So while you're taking your finals this week, just know that us education majors are also taking finals and we're studying and stressing just as much as you are.
