My Daughter Wants to be a Teacher

From the time she was in kindergarten and had a wonderful teacher named Mrs. C my daughter has wanted to be a teacher. Today she is 12 and still knows for a fact that this is what she wants to do. My wife is a teacher and at events at school, family nights, events of this nature my daughter goes in and runs stations and tables for the little children. She enjoys it and has when helping my wife on the weekend set up her classroom or laminating said to my wife, her step-mom, " Why would anyone not want to be a teacher?" She feels that it is the greatest job in the world.

Barack Obama in his State of the Union Address made a statement that any young people watching should consider in their choice of a career becoming a teacher as few things were more important than this.

And yet for all this affirmation about being a teacher by our President and other public figures I worry about my daughters choice.

One can argue about tenure, budgets and benefits but how do we think we are encouraging some of our best and brightest to become teachers. If at the first sign of budget problems we want to go after education what message our we sending our children.

We should ask ourselves some hard questions about our words versus our deeds when it comes to education. Do we as parents respect education. Do we support our schools and our children's teachers.

I know better than to do this as it always just makes me sad, and sometimes mad, but recently I read some of the comments below an article in the BDN about budgets, teachers, education and the proposed cuts. The vitriol spilled by these commentators about teachers waking up and facing the budget crunch, that their benefits are too good and on and on and worse and worse.

Teachers have the summer off and we joke about that and say that is a great benefit and it would be wrong to say it is not. Anyone who thinks teachers are overpaid has no concept of the time, training, effort and dedication these people have.

Too many parents do not respect education, do not respect teachers and make sure their kids know this as they send them to school.

A comment I read said that anyone could house train a monkey if they had time. I do not know what this has to do with education but it does perhaps say more about the writer than the issue he is trying to write about. It is a bit ironic to read the comments about education often misspelled and poorly written.

I do not say this as someone placing myself above them. My writing often has issues, my best friend constantly tells me I need to invest in some punctuation more often but I know that I respect education.

Would you take your child to the cheapest doctor you could find. Would you go to a Doctor for surgery if he promised his price was the lowest. Would you take your child to the cheapest daycare you could find if you felt it was not a good place for them to be. If the answer is no then we do have to ask why do we want to get cut rate teachers and have cut rate education. We have issues in America but we are not a third world nation.

All of us want more for our children than we have had. We all worry about that. Cutting education and vilifying teachers will not help us help our children reach these goals.

You do not have to like paying taxes. No one does. If there is any group of people that deserve your respect it is teachers. Let's think about that. I would like to encourage my daughter to follow her dream.