by @weberswords

An open letter to teachers who constantly complain:

Quit. Please. Do our entire profession a favor so that we can be considered professionals again.

Now I’m not talking about the occasional vent session. I’m talking about the teachers who do nothing but complain and blame their students’ lack of success on everything but themselves – home, administration, common core, lack of funding, poor parenting, Obama (Thanks, Obama). Teachers who fail to look in the mirror and say, “How can I improve? How can I up my game?”

Yes, teaching is hard. It’s really hard. It’s demanding and exhausting and on most Fridays you will go into a coma because of the week you’ve had and wake up somewhere around Sunday.

Students come unprepared and a good number of parents either don’t care or provide support at all for any number of reasons or hover around you expecting you to cater to their child as though he/she is the only child you support.

Unfortunately, that’s not something you can change, it’s a part of the job.

Do things need to change? Yes. But you, complaining teacher, are the rotten core of the educational apple.

In the free market you would have moved on by now. In another profession that is far more ruthless about success you would have realized you suck and found something else. Here you are though, clinging like a dingleberry to the butt of a cat. If this were medicine you would have killed someone and lost your license. If this were wall street, well you’d probably be a CEO. No, even there, you don’t work hard enough to survive your first year.

By the way, this isn’t about first or even second year teachers either. Everyone sucks at first because the majority of teacher preparation programs are abysmal. I came from (what I found out later – shout out Eastern Michigan) is an incredible program, but nothing prepares you for your first solo flight. You hit turbulence, it’s just a matter of how you deal with it.

Your plane should have crashed and burned a long time ago, but as teachers we want everyone to find success so we prop you up with support that goes above and beyond what it should. Should there be support for teachers to help them continue to succeed and grow? Yes!

However…

If you need a teacher’s manual to teach – get out.

If yelling is your classroom management plan – get out.

If you say things like, “I can’t do that,” or “That’s too much for me,” when it comes to learning new things, GET OUT.

If you don’t actively continue educating yourself by reading books or articles or taking classes, not because you need the credit to renew your license, but because you want to be a better teacher and you know you never stop learning – GET OUT.

Leave. The ship is sinking, arguably it has been for ages, but your dead weight is only making it worse.