Dear Mass Media in Politics

I would like to thank mass media for rarely getting to the point. It is hard, I know, when you also need to report on celebrities and trending YouTube videos. I know it's hard to adapt when the breadth of your job continues to increase while your resources dwindle.

My job has similar problems. Did you know, for example, that teachers are more than just highly paid babysitters? The parents that you interview don't seem to. I wonder why.

Okay, I'll give you and your viewers that much credit. You must know that we really do teach. Did you know that teachers are not only responsible for keeping 30+ little bodies safe and teaching them the regular "school stuff" that we are now in charge of making sure they get 30 minutes of exercise a day. We are, of course responsible for a good deal of their social development as well. Some parents are on this. Some aren't. The curriculum is forever changing. Things are added but rarely removed. There is also a constant parade of new programs, theories, and assessment methods coming in from the experts. We need to sort the good ones out and incorporate them into our own teaching.

We also need to accommodate students with special needs. There are a lot of kids out their who are gifted, or who have academic difficulties, or emotional problems. It takes a long time to get them assessed, so we need to do our best. Even after they get assessed, their isn't the support they need. We need to fill in those gaps too.

Did you know that even veteran teachers are forever having to update and adapt their lessons. Even they have to put in hours of unpaid overtime on a daily basis. New teachers, well, we are lucky to make it home by bedtime. Did you know that the average teacher puts an average of $1000 into their classroom each year to get resources that they can't access?

Is the wage that we want fair given the economic climate? To be honest, I don't know and I don't care, though I will point out that we haven't had a raise in two years.

But please, please, let's forget about the wages for just 30 seconds, because I think that the vast majority of teachers would happily take wage increase off the bargaining table if you met their other demands. You know, the ones you haven't mentioned, like more specialized teachers, more support staff, limits on class size, limits on special needs students per class (and not just because they haven't been assessed).

I assure you that no teacher goes into teaching for the money. Yes, our demands are selfish. We want better working conditions, but we want better working conditions because we care about our jobs. When we see holes in the system, we don't say "to bad" and go home. We try to give that kid the extra help, or purchase resources with our own money. We do it because we care, but we are only human, and that can only go so far before we get burned out.

So to folks working in mass media, and to the folks listening to it, I urge you to look at both sides of the story before you call your teachers greedy.