In the past two years of being an education major and daycare teacher, I have learned that teaching is hard. Really hard. While I haven't dived completely into the teaching world, I have received a small glimpse of the side of the classroom that many people never get to see. What I have witnessed so far is much different than I imagined.
For starters, kids don't really listen. I remember being in class and always getting annoyed if I couldn't talk to my friends or not being aloud to text someone back when I wanted to. Apparently there are rules for a reason (currently rolling my eyes at myself for that sentence). Even they don't seem as important as your latest drama, they really are. Teachers need to follow a curriculum, and every time class is disrupted by a student acting out or not listening, it takes time out of learning the material. This does one of two things. Either you get less explanation and time to learn something (that you really need to learn) or it takes the fun things that your teacher most likely has planned out of the lesson because of time wasted dealing with misbehavior. Also, it will 100% put your teacher in a bad mood if you aren't listening to directions. The #1 way to make class more fun is by listening to instructions and the lesson; everyone will be happier, and you might even get some free time.
Another thing that I have noticed is that there is a disconnect students have in viewing teachers as real people. For some reason, students think that teachers live at school and only grade papers when there isn't class, but obviously that isn't true at all. It's important to remember that your teachers are real people with real emotions, lives, friends, hobbies and everything else that a real person would have. So treat them that way. Understand that they have other things in their lives and sometimes life is really hard. So show grace to your teacher if your essay isn't graded immediately, or if they aren't in the best mood one day. They aren't machines, and being sassy and disruptive doesn't make anything better.
Even though the job is really hard, students don't always listen, and life is much larger than just a classroom, teachers still come to school everyday and spend most of their days with kids. They do this with patience, care and passion (most of the time) because teaching is what they love to do. Just remember that they are real people and need grace just like the rest of the world because they are doing so much and the paycheck isn't why they do it. For those reasons, teachers are crazy. But they are the good kind of crazy, because we need people in the world who will do this job, and do it well.
