Published: March 21, 2008 03:51 pm            

Where’s the respect? Teachers deserve a higher value from all of us

Where would any of us be today without teachers who worked through those often frustrating years getting us to learn? So many, it seems, have forgotten those good old school days that prepared them for their future.

As a former teacher, now retired, I know that working in the classroom was much more difficult than working as a New York City marketing executive where success was based on my own efforts. Teachers, on the other hand, are expected to take the blame for students who might not care at all to get good grades or behave in school. And it is only the teachers' patience and love for both students and teaching that help them stay the course.

Why is it that teachers are the ones who have to suffer economically when state and city belts need to be tightened? For non-teachers, it is rather easy for them to point out the supposed undeserved perks teachers receive. It takes nothing to be flip about how they leave work at 3 p.m., earn enough for nine months of work, and get holidays and summers off.

It is that same old song outsiders have been singing off key for so many years. While foreign nations have the highest respect for teachers, here in America too many non-teachers consider it a given to play down their value and their worth.

In so many school systems throughout the country, teachers work without new contracts. For example, in the New Jersey city where I taught, frustrated teachers stand on the brink of a strike because they and the board of education cannot agree on negotiations. Who can be surprised at their level of frustration! Teachers need a contract. They should not be put off.

As for West Virginia teachers, how many more years must they be told they either earn enough or a substantial increment is on the way? I believe teachers are not the bad guys in contract dramas. It appears to be the general mentality that teachers are on the bottom rung of the professional ladder; they teach because they can't do anything else. However, if you ask any other professional — like a doctor or lawyer — to name someone to whom he or she feels indebted, chances are good that a teacher will be named.

Townspeople, and that includes parents, students, administrators, newspaper editorial writers, and even the board of education itself, should be more inclined to want happy teachers teaching their children.

They should not play down the social value of our good teachers and the good schools in which they labor to help shape the future of our state and our country.

— Salvatore Buttaci

Princeton,WV

        

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