Tom Moore in the New York Times:

Every year young people enter the teaching profession hoping to emulate the teachers they’ve seen in films. (Maybe in the back of my mind I felt that I could be an inspiring teacher like Howard Hesseman or Gabe Kaplan.) But when you’re confronted with the reality of teaching not just one class of misunderstood teenagers (the common television and movie conceit) but four or five every day, and dealing with parents, administrators, mentors, grades, attendance records, standardized tests and individual education plans for children with learning disabilities, not to mention multiple daily lesson plans — all without being able to count on the support of your superiors — it becomes harder to measure up to the heroic movie teachers you thought you might be.

Amen.

My last day as a classroom teacher was April 1, 1999 (ironic timing, I know). Since then I’ve missed it exactly twice. A few hours one evening that May when I attended commencement and saw all my Seniors graduate, and a few hours the following August on the first morning of school when I was working in an office instead of in a classroom (but I was over that by lunch). It’s thankless work (until 20 years later when former students have kids of their own in school and start to realize how much some teachers meant to them), and more than anything teachers are undersupported by the administration - both at the school and the central office.

Teachers go into the profession knowing mostly what the students will be like, what the parents will be like, and what the pay will be like. But they have an expectation that they’ll at least be given a chance to be successful, and nothing ruins that chance at success more than an administration that refuses to meet its primary obligation - protect the school and classroom environment from disruption so teachers can teach and students can learn.