“We should definitely arm our teachers. We should arm them with good wages and the funding and supplies they need to help our children succeed.” –Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
Thank you, Representative Schakowsky!
Arm me with some office supplies. How about a pencil sharpener that I don’t have to buy myself? Remember that closet full of shelves heavily-laden with office supplies in my school that used to sit there waiting for me to need them? Whatever happened to that?
Arm me with some lined handwriting paper for my students. Whenever I ask for 2 packs, knowing I’ll never be granted the 4 packs I really need, I only ever receive 1 pack.
Arm me with some water bottles, or better yet, how about a sink that actually works? I keep asking parents to send water bottles with their children each day, and for whatever reason, a surprising number do not. I guess they think their child is going to magically hydrate himself. However, the joke’s on them, because even though I have two sinks in my room, neither works properly and hasn’t for weeks, make that months. The janitors had to disconnect the one in my classroom when the drain began leaking into the cabinet below the sink, drenching everything that was stored there and cascading onto the floor. The one in the adjoining bathroom, on the other hand, runs constantly, but only warm water. The cold has never worked. So if a child wants a drink of water in my room, they either have to bring it from home or endure the foul-tasting lukewarm swill that runs from the bathroom sink. I guess I should have become a plumber, not a teacher.
Arm me with a paycheck on which I could survive if, God forbid, something should happen to my husband’s income. Adequately compensate me for the 10+ hours I work each day and the time I spend on this job over the weekends. Proportionally reward me for the value I add to the lives of my students, their families, and the society in which I live.
Arm me with a full-time instructional assistant. It wasn’t that long ago that I had one. I miss her. Very much! Now, I’m granted the benefit of an assistant for 45 minutes in the morning and 45 minutes in the afternoon…if she’s not pulled to cover someone else’s duty somewhere else in the building, which she is about 85% of the time. I’ve seen her twice during her normally-scheduled time in my class in the last three weeks.
Arm me with enough janitors in my building to actually keep it clean and to be able to come when I need them, like today when one of my students peed her pants for the second time and left a puddle in her chair and on the floor that I had to mop up…twice. Give me parents that send a change of clothing when I ask them.
Arm me with an aid dedicated full-time to meeting the needs of my Down’s syndrome student. They used to exist, honest! I know because I used to take long-term sub assignments for them. Each child with special needs that was put into a regular classroom was given an aid just for that child. Heck, I’d even settle for one that was just available for toileting needs, like this morning when my six-year-old little EC friend had pooped her pull-up, and the EC teacher and her assistant were busy literally wrestling with another more pressing issue and couldn’t come to help change her. Send me someone to watch my class while I have to turn my back on them to change her and clean her up myself. Arm me with a way to dispose of the nasty-smelling used pull-up so that my room doesn’t smell like excrement all day, every day because I can’t leave a classroom full of kindergartners to take it outside to the dumpster.
Arm me with the patience to deal with my other student who has been diagnosed with Autism but whose parents think he has “outgrown” it. Grant me the peace of mind to cope with his constant noise-making and motions and distractions. Help me be able to focus above the din of his inattentiveness and to find a way to reach him.
Arm me with the time to teach, really teach, not attend meetings or give one more required standardized test or progress monitoring assessment or type one more report or learn one more new curriculum or participate in yet another marginally-helpful, mandatory professional development class. Let me teach. Let me do my job.
I don’t need a gun. I need you to make it harder for people to have access to them, people who have no business carrying one. Arm me with your trust, your respect, and your protection, all of which I have earned. Treat me as the intelligent, experienced professional that I am, and listen when I try to teach YOU something.