“If you can read this, thank a teacher.” – Harry Truman

I am convinced there is no other job on the planet more important yet less appreciated than that of a teacher. I’ve always felt that teaching and preaching were spelled similarly and rhymed because both are callings – if they aren’t in your heart, then you don’t need to do them.

As I’ve shared before, being a teacher is the best yet toughest thing I’ve ever done. Now, before you start that “yeah, whatever” stuff, know that I worked in the private sector for well over a decade before I stepped foot in a classroom as a teacher.

Take it from me – there is no comparison between the two.

Imagine it: your job is to be set up and centered in front of 30 or so teenagers (or younger), each a bundle of raging hormones that keeps their brains right on the verge of disconnecting at any given moment. You never know what they have come from when you see them every single day – did they spend last night with their parents, any parent, have a holy fight with one of them, did they even go home, or were their parents even home to begin with? Have they fought with their mom’s boyfriend, or with their boyfriend that has them contemplating ending it all, or did they find out this morning that they are pregnant? Did they get drunk or high? Do they have a knife or a gun with them? Did they stay up until 3 in the morning chatting with God only knows who online? Are they in tears because they have a pimple on the end of their nose, or any of the above reasons?

Now, do that six times a day for 180 days, all while trying to teach them all something of value. And people have the nerve to actually ask why teachers need breaks.

It is, simply, the most frustrating, confusing, exhilarating, antagonizing, nerve-rattling, challenging, and rewarding job in the world. And no two days are the same. None of them.

All rolled into every moment of every day when those 60 eyes are focused squarely on you.

To me, the toughest part is having to say goodbye every year. For teachers who care – and most do – they give years of their lives to other people’s children, and love them basically as their own. They help those kids through years of learning, counseling, praying, moral examples, and defusing – and then they are gone. Every year, they say goodbye to a pile of kids that in many ways are their kids, too.

When you teach high school and the end of the school year approaches, you start looking at all of those faces, many of which have become a part of your own life, recalling all the thousands of memories shared and how they have changed and grown, and it isn’t easy to not get teary eyed.

“But, you get all those days off!” some say. “You get the summer (which, by the way, is entirely spent taking required classes for many teachers). You work from 8 until 3 Monday through Friday (which is about the funniest thing I’ve ever heard…I worked an average of 60-65 hours a week easily). How can it be so hard?”

How? Because our product is not a car or a honey bun or a mobile home or anything. Our product is people. Teachers today are mentors, psychiatrists, parents, preachers, and much more every single day. That’s what teachers today are tasked to do – to help mold every facet of a kid into a human being with a fighting chance at succeeding at the game of life regardless of the circumstances he or she comes from.

Failing a student is the hardest thing a teacher does, because it haunts them. 98% of those students do just fine, but that 2% is something you never get over or around, because you feel personally responsible. “If maybe I had only done this,” or “why couldn’t I reach them?” That never goes away.

Some of them you just can’t reach. You learn to accept that fact, but it’s never easy. Teachers are there to teach how to succeed, not fail, and when that doesn’t happen, we feel like we didn’t do our job – and we always know, beyond all doubt, it is going to happen to someone’s child.

Put that on your shoulders as the way you earn your paycheck.

Most folks who attempt to come into teaching from the “outside” don’t last more than two years, most less than a year. The internal strain and toll are just too great to justify the monetary payoff, which is where too many measure success. That’s what the “real” world does to you.

A teacher doesn’t measure success by their bank account, otherwise, nobody would ever do it. Our payoff is seeing your child – our student – walk across that stage, get that diploma, and smile that smile that tells the world, “I did it, and now I’m ready for the rest of my life.”

And, the satisfaction of knowing that without you, it might not have ever happened.

As another school year winds down, tell the good teachers in your existence that you appreciate them. I promise they need to hear it more than you may ever know.