Although being a teacher may not seem like a lucrative career, I've certainly made up for the small salary in another kind of currency: Starbucks gift cards. I am currently considering inquiring into the possibility of purchasing a Starbucks franchise with said gift cards. Methinks the profits from that would make a nice little nest egg, which would be particularly helpful since right now our nest is egg-less, unless you count the giant Faberge egg that we intend to blow in Europe this summer. (Thanks, American government, for the giant tax return which we will be using to strengthen the French economy! Thanks and sorry, that is . . . )
And of course there's the currency of love and adoration and touched lives, which took the form of a giant birthday card with butterflies and kitties on it, signed by my seventh grade class. (Life goal #47, check.) There are also other benefits, like the schadenfreude we indulge in now that we're giving finals and not taking them. There's summer break, which I intend to squander by smothering my kitty with love all day every day (only partially untrue).
But I think one of my favorite parts about being a teacher is something entirely unexpected, a collection not of intellectual breakthroughs or inspired speeches, but of bat-poo crazy parent interactions. There, I said it. I think most teachers at our school agree that we like all of our kids. Even the most troublesome ones are rarely unlikeable: one of our largest suspensions this year for a student who wrote a particularly uplifting and encouraging message on the bathroom wall. But parents, oh goodness, parents be crazy.
I've been yelled at over the phone for absolutely no reason ("You are not being very helpful right now!"), I've been asked for advice about the specific nature of punishments (I am 23 and childless, people. I am no more qualified to give advice about raising a child than I am to give advice about the afore-mentioned, nonexistent nest egg.), and I've been given all manner of excuses for students' poor performance (many of which are probably true, including parrots eating homework). I have been accused of book burning (which may be legit--it there's any thing I hate, it's books) because another teacher told a sixth-grade student I don't even know to put away a violent book about zombies. I don't mind any of these things; I kind of enjoy that humans (myself included) can be a little absurd, and I'm always happier to have a parent who cares than one who doesn't.
My favorite strange parent interaction, however, was given to me as if for an end-of-year present, by the parents of one of my students. He wanted the school to change its modern language from French to Spanish. The oddness of this interaction came from the vehemence and intensity of the emails he sent to me and to the school; never have I seen someone so passionate about a language they didn't even speak. The crux of the emails was this: Spanish provides our children with economic advantages. French is financially irrelevant and will have no place in our children's world; we are doing them a disservice by teaching it to them.
Although I tried carefully and thoughtfully to lay out a case for French, for its cultural richness, for its ubiquity, and even for its practical uses, this parent was unconvinced. Prep schools are to prep children for the workforce, and French can't compete with Spanish in that arena. If I could have responded frankly, irreverently, and intimately to this man, a man who, upon our first meeting, I imagined to be a powerful business magnate, I would say this: I majored in French, and I managed to secure a job in spite of it. I have more money than I need (enough for the obligatory young-person European vacation). I also have the undying affection of 25 seventh graders (with a giant kitty card to prove it) and the respect of 30 high-schoolers whom I forced to learn the subjunctive mood this year. Is that really so bad? Could you really be disappointed or pitying if your daughter suffered the same fate? Would learning Spanish have made me richer? It seems unlikely, but at least possible. Would it have made me happier? Almost certainly not.
Now just wait until I get my Starbucks franchise. That'll really show him . . .
I loved this. So much. :-)
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