They have students who can t read at grade level or read at all. We are, indeed, a compassionate society and keep students with mental, emotional, or physical problems or all three in school. Right as this trend is, it multiplies teachers challenges. After school, teachers direct the school play, advise the newspaper, meet with the math club, go on the class trip, or coach soccer for little or no extra pay. In school, they have corridor and cafeteria duty, meetings on curriculum and meetings with students and their parents.
Many children come to school dark-eyed and exhausted.
They have been up late working or caring for their siblings, even their parents. Teachers get to know the students and discover the parents are divorced or never were married, that this month there is a new uncle or aunt in the master bedroom, one that drinks or is abusive. I met the cut and bruised high schooler whose mother had drunkenly shoved him from the car on the way to school. I saw teachers listen to the students who had nobody listen to them at home. I saw teachers give them respect and encouragement as well as instruction in English, math, history, chemistry.