American Schoolteachers Are Heroes. They Shouldn’t Have To Be.

It was Valentine’s Day. Balloons, roses and pastel-colored bags adorned the hallways, which were full of middle-schoolers running to their hopeful faves and BFFs. In my classroom, because it was a special day, I let students eat the assorted chocolates and lollipops they’d stashed in their bags. In an eighth-grade lesson on the slope-intercept form of an equation, which would conclude the unit we were learning, the students got off-task and began gossiping, as they are wont to do.

Normally, they chat about fellow students, teachers, and the NBA. This time, at around 11:30 a.m., one of my more unfocused students peered directly in my eyes and asked, “Yo, can you imagine if there was a school shooting here? That would be wild.”

It was hours before the news of the most recent school massacre broke. I looked right back at him and said, “I’d do everything in my power to protect you.” He might have expected me to shrug his question off, but I didn’t. His life matters. He looked back and said, “Oh ... OK.”

I wrestle constantly with the popular vision of teachers as heroes in moments of tragedy. In my 13-year teaching career, I’ve accumulated a list of actions that could be perceived as heroic. I’ve broken up fights, stayed long hours after school and during breaks, consoled parents who’ve shared personal stories of resilience, cried with students through any number of tragedies big and small and bought supplies for the classroom out of my own pocket.

I don’t think I’m special. In fact, I think I’m the norm. Like my colleagues and friends, I do what it takes to reach the children I serve. Educators like us make daily sacrifices to do our jobs, because we love the work and we care deeply about our students. Each and every one of us has asked ourselves the same question my distracted student asked me on Wednesday morning: What heroism might one day be demanded of us because we’ve chosen to be schoolteachers in America?

Source: huffingtonpost