{"id":18990,"date":"2017-01-04T22:49:30","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T22:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18990"},"modified":"2017-01-04T22:49:30","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T22:49:30","slug":"teachers-are-a-cut-above-many-of-the-rest-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18990","title":{"rendered":"Teachers are a cut above many of the rest of us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.<\/em><\/p>\n

I made a confession today to someone I didn’t know before we met at Street Toyota, where I work part-time as a service department concierge.<\/p>\n

This woman is a retired public school teacher and counselor. She served as a counselor in Spearman and Borger, Texas. We exchanged pleasantries and then I told her: “I am not wired to be a teacher.” I then saluted her for her years of service in public education and told her that I remain convinced now more than ever that teachers have a special wiring that enables them to do what they do.<\/p>\n

I doffed my imaginary cap to her and we continued chatting about this and that while she waited for her car to be serviced.<\/p>\n

Since\u00a0I stopped working full-time for a living — in daily print journalism — more than four years ago, I have tried my hand at a number of gigs. Some of those gigs involved journalism: blogging for Panhandle PBS and for KFDA NewsChannel 10 and helping produce a weekly newspaper, the Quay County Sun in Tucumcari, N.M.<\/p>\n

One gig involved working for about six months as a juvenile supervision officer for the Randall County Youth Center of the High Plains.<\/p>\n

Still another was as a substitute teacher in the Amarillo Independent School District. I learned right away\u00a0about one of my many shortcomings\u00a0as I entered a classroom full of students who began sizing me up right away.<\/p>\n

That shortcoming is this: My DNA does not allow me cope well with students who know how to play substitute teachers like fiddles; it becomes something of an art form with these individuals<\/p>\n

The Amarillo school system would send me to one of its four public high schools fairly regularly; I will not disclose which one. I did not do well\u00a0dealing with the youngsters with attitudes, man. It was particularly stark right after lunch. The students would come back from their lunch hour after having consumed — more than likely — copious amounts of sugar and\u00a0caffeinated drinks (such as, oh, Red Bull). They had difficulty settling down.<\/p>\n

Some of the little darlin’s thought they’d test me. They wouldn’t do as I asked. They would mouth off. They would disrespect the ol’ man — yours truly.<\/p>\n

I was empowered, of course, to summon help from The Office<\/em> if I needed it. I chose not to exercise that power. I just didn’t want to admit to the administration at this high school that I couldn’t handle the little pukes,\u00a0I mean\u00a0students.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, I let ’em trample all over me.<\/p>\n

After a while, I came to this realization: The Amarillo ISD didn’t pay me enough to put up with the snark infestation.<\/p>\n

I quit accepting assignments at that high school, which apparently was where the need was greatest. The rest of the school district didn’t need my services regularly.<\/p>\n

I walked away from that gig.<\/p>\n

Which brings me back to my point. I salute teachers the way I salute first responders — such as firefighters, police officers, EMTs and paramedics.<\/p>\n

They all do things I am incapable of doing.<\/p>\n

I’ll stick with what I know, which at the moment continues to be writing about politics, public policy and life experience on this blog and greeting customers at the auto dealership.<\/p>\n

I will cede the hard work gladly to public school educators.<\/p>\n\n

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This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement. I made a confession today to someone I didn’t know before we met at Street Toyota, where I work part-time as a service department concierge. This woman is a retired public school teacher and counselor. She served as a counselor … Continue reading Teachers are a cut above many of the rest of us<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6251,8],"tags":[179,316,6826,3487,3766,6825,3790],"class_list":["post-18990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-news","category-legal-news","tag-agn-media","tag-amarillo-isd","tag-kfda-tv","tag-panhandle-pbs","tag-public-education","tag-public-school-teachers","tag-quay-county-sun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18990"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18992,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18990\/revisions\/18992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}