(ThyBlackMan.com) Teachers are amazing, and they contribute so much knowledge and goodness to the life of our children. They spend the majority of the day, five days a week, with our kids. They see the academic and personal development of the children they teach over every school year. Teachers have academic expectations they are striving to reach with each child; they want that student strive every day to learn all they can and produce when testing season arrives. Unfortunately, too many teachers are raising our children, and setting the academic standard. I know the second part may sound like apart of their job, but I submit to you it is not.
Too many teachers are having to do the job of a parent. It doesn’t matter what is going on in the life of the parent…if they have children, they have to take an interest in that child’s academic progress. If the parent is non-existent the teacher is fighting an uphill battle; many educators know this, but they wage war everyday for the minds of our young people. They do this without adequate resources, and subpar pay. We would not have any profession that exist without teachers, yet their pay is the reflection of an ungrateful society.
Standards should begin at home. Children must be introduced to the joy of learning by parents. This can be fostered to taking the kids to the library, reading with them, talking to them about the things they see everyday and how that affects them. Something as simple as discussing the weather can intrigue a child. We should be sending our children to school with a desire to learn. Teachers are taking this by the horns because the parents are not engaging the learning environment. Yes, parenting can be hard especially when one is working crazy hours to provide for one’s family.
However, many parents make time for phone conversations and social media…so they can find time to talk to their children about school or read a story. If may be a sacrifice of sleep but it’s important when children are little to show up for them as much as possible. If school is important to mommy and daddy school is important to the child. I used to hear the elders say, “charity begins at home”. This saying was used to explain many different behaviors that should begin at home under the care of the parent. We must set the academic standard and expectations for our children from the moment they enter school. Pre-K and kindergarten should be when our babies begin to see the standard.
Its time we stop asking teachers to be parents. The constant in the life of a child is the parent. They get new teachers every year, but you mom and dad will be the foundation that stays the same throughout the school years. It’s important to instill in the child no only the joy of learning, but the importance of education. We love to say we should vote because the ancestors died for our right to do so. The same can be said of education as it is necessary to understand what one is voting about. Many fought and died for our right to education and that needs to be engrained in our children.
Staff Writer; Christian Starr
May connect with this sister over at Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/christian.pierre.9809 and also Twitter; http://twitter.com/MrzZeta.