Sunday is such a unique day of the week. Normally, I love a Sunday morning, especially a beautiful one like today. In the morning, the rest of the day is filled with possibility of relaxation, enjoyment, and who knows what else, but then as the day wears on, workday Monday begins to loom and my whole attitude changes. Ah, well, such is life, right?
Bowling...Who'd a Thought?
Last night, one of my new bowling buddies, Tim, invited me to a party that one of his teammates was giving. Tim's team was the team that my team played on the first night of bowling and that became my wonderful introduction to a whole new gay world. Who'd a thought?
The guys on Tim's team, Tim, Sean, Al and Steve...(well Steve's the only one I don't really know yet)...are all fun, genuine people, and I already consider Tim and Sean good friends. Al was the one who hosted the party and there were plenty of guys from the league there, all plu's, and all really nice. After all of my lamentations about the single life these past few years, I only wish I had done this sooner, and I'm looking forward more than ever to getting to know more people and expanding my circle of friends.
More Teacher Bashing
One of the things I like about Sunday mornings is reading the Sunday paper. It's a lifetime Sunday morning ritual that I look forward to, though it's not always a pleasant experience. I only read the paper once a week because almost always there are things in there that get my blood boiling, like today. My hometown newspaper is called Newsday, and it's a pretty respectable paper for a non-metropolitan area periodical, though quite often it gets me frustrated!
For the past nine-plus years, I've made my living as a teacher, and it's taken that long for me to become a little jaded at my profession. I became a teacher for many reasons: it makes good use of my natural talents, I love working with kids, and I have an innate compassion for my students that transcends just teaching. My students and I are as close as you can get to being a family, and I've been fortunate enough to have maintained contact with many of my students long after they've graduated.
To me, teaching is one of the most honorable professions a person can take on. Teachers are tasked with a huge undertaking, which in reality is helping to prepare our young ones to be productive and contributive towards society...our society. Children are our future and teaching them is a teacher's way of contributing to our society today and into the coming years. So why then do so many people seemingly hate teachers?
Teacher bashing has become a very popular activity these past several years. For whatever reason (I have my thoughts), teachers have become so vilified in today's society, and part of the problem is that the media seems to only fan those flames, like Newsday has done today.
The cover of today's paper features a headline that reads: LI Teachers: Take a Course, Get a Raise, with a subtitle, Easy Money: Questionable classes boost salaries, costing taxpayers. The imagery featured between the headline and subtitle is a listing of various courses, I would guess deemed 'questionnable" by the paper.
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The key word here, of course, is 'taxpayers.' Therein lies the source of teacher bashing in today's world, and Newsday once again is irresponsibly fanning the flames of disgust and vitriol against my profession. The special 'investigation' takes up the entire first five pages of today's paper, and goes on to make a case at how teachers hike up their salaries by taking meaningless courses of required professional development. The article points to several seemingly ridiculous courses that appear to have nothing to do with teaching, and yes, I would agree that there are teachers who take such courses not for the knowledge, but for the money, but what I have issue with here are all of the implications the article makes, and how certain, specific details are highlighted in order to fan those flames.
My question here is: Is Newsday a friend of education or purposely trying to vilify the teaching profession by inciting certain anger towards us on the part of its readers? There's a lot more I wish to say about this, and so I feel a piece coming on for Examiner, which is likely to get more views than this blog post, so stay tuned for that...
A Beautiful Autumn Sunday
There, now that I've spoken my piece, I'm going to get moving and head on out to enjoy this absolutely typical and gorgeous autumn day. Too bad I have no one to share it with, though...sigh! This is one of those kinds of days where I wished I had someone... Anyway, thanks as always for checking me out. Enjoy the day!
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