Some fears are real. I’m afraid of snakes. Deathly afraid of
snakes. I can’t even watch them on TV or look at them in a book. And then I
have some fears that are silly. Fears
that sound too silly to even say. So,
what are teachers afraid of?
1. Teachers are afraid that they won’t have a snow day. Face it, we all need snow days. Snow days are
little gifts that allow us to sleep in and watch the snow from inside where it
is warm and safe.
2. Being snowed in at school. Kids joke about being snowed in. Teachers
cringe in fear. I would definitely find a way out. Even if I had to walk 5
miles in snow uphill.
3. Too many snow days. Too many snow days = too few summer
vacation days. Enough said.
4. Grading essays, especially when you have 150 middle
school students. There goes the week-end! One paragraph blends into another and
every sentence looks pretty much like the last.
5. Wearing two different shoes. Nope, I didn’t do this. Yep,
one of my best friends did. I just wore
my shirt backwards all day. Didn’t realize it until my supervisor was
complimenting me on my attention to details.
6. Kids that won’t move or kids that do move. We all have
students that are “model students” and those are usually the ones that move.
The child that turns every hair gray and raises our blood pressure doesn’t even
use sick days.
7. State testing. Maybe not a fear, but definitely a worry.
We spend April and May second guessing our teaching methods and strategies. Did
I teach the subject well enough? Did I cover all the standards? Will my
students remember everything I taught?
Too much emphasis is placed on state testing.
8. The email from the principal requesting a meeting with
you tomorrow. Do you sleep? Probably not well.
You spend your time trying to figure out what they want or what you did. Even though these meetings are usually harmless, teachers are rule-followers that are
afraid of being in trouble for not following a rule they didn’t even know they
weren’t following. Did you follow that?
9. The parent that can’t find anything good to say. Nothing
you do or say will change this person. Hard to accept, worrisome, annoying, frustrating, but we have
to accept that we can’t make everyone happy all the time. Some people are never pleased or satisfied.
10. Not making a difference. That’s why we’re teachers. We
want to make a difference. We want to help children and we’re afraid that we
will somehow fail. The fact that we worry about it ensures us that we won’t
fail.
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