Husband was telling me about a particular situation he has been having trouble with. Then he said, "I shouldn't even care", but he does. He believes that people should do the very best they can at their jobs. Then I bring up a similar situation that is going on with the school. His response was, "The teachers just don't care. It's just a job." The word I would like to stress is TEACHERS. The TEACHERS don't care. People are constantly saying that people don't go into teaching if they don't care about their students. Unfortunately, I haven't found this to be true. And that's a sad statement from someone who was a teacher. So, it's come down to teachers being compared to lazy salesmen. I'm not saying all teachers, so don't get your panties in a bunch. The thing is, with a salesman, they don't have to care. They don't have to even believe in their product. They have to hit and number and then they can just forget it. Good salesmen don't do that. Good salesmen offer support, service and follow up. As should a good teacher. If you say you are going to make accommodations for a child, make the damned accommodations. My child is not stupid (see the above about how frickin' smart my kids must be) and he knows he's supposed to be getting help. So when you don't do it, what are you teaching my kid? You are teaching him that he doesn't matter. You are teaching him that you don't care to do your best at your job. You are teaching him that doing your best is not important. You are teaching him that doing a half-assed job is acceptable. And then you wonder why he puts little effort into it? No one wants to actually work for someone who refuses to help them. Then I look at it and think, why did I waste an hour and half of my time in a meeting when the things that were promised aren't even being done? If you discussed a design with a contractor, and then the contractor didn't bother to follow it and did their own thing, that contractor wouldn't get paid. If a salesman sold a product and then didn't bother to deliver it, the salesman would be fired or not paid. Yet, in our education system, the system that we put our children into to mold them into responsible adults, it seems to be OK not do the job completely.
I am so thankful I can teach my kids what they are not getting at school. I am so thankful that I be around to instill in my kids that anything worth doing is worth doing well. It sucks when my kid is so upset about going to school because he doesn't understand something and it takes me, literally, 5 minutes to explain it to him. Five minutes. It would have taken a teacher 5 minutes to break it down so he could get it. It would have taken less if he actually received the accommodations he was supposed to have. Then, we would all know if my kid is doing something half-assed or if he really doesn't get it. If he's not putting forth the effort, that's on him. But a teacher not putting forth the effort and then grading my kid on something they never bothered teaching or helping with, that's on them. Don't do your job half-assed. Some of you may be thinking, it's the end of the year and everyone slacks a little at the end of the year. I would be willing to agree with that if this had only been the end of the year. Or if it hadn't been the past 4 years of school (actually, I would like to amend that since last year my son's teacher was awesome and she did actually put forth effort to get him what he needed).
I may "only" be a stay at home mom, but I work hard, every single day. I do my job to the best of my ability every day. If I don't, know who it falls back on? Me. I decide to only wash part of the dishes, those dishes will sit there and wait for me. I only vacuum one area of the house, the dog hair accumulates in the other until I get to it. I don't put the things from the store away, they sit wherever I unpacked them until I do. Every last thing I do, if I don't do my job completely, it just builds. It's the same way for Husband with his job. He only sort of fixes something, he knows he'll have to go back out to fix it. He does a poor job on an install, he knows he'll be back out to fix it. He doesn't want to have to keep going back to job sites, so he does it right the first time. Yet, somehow, in all other areas of life, people can skate by doing the bare minimum. I often wonder what the point is in trying to do a good job, and then I look at my kids. The point is them. The point is to be the people we want them to become and not be the lazy jerks we don't want them to become. In a world filled with so many people only looking out for themselves and trying to do the littlest bit of work they possibly can, we need to be the examples goodness and hard work. They obviously don't see these examples at school where they spend the majority of their time (OK, my daughter does because her teachers have all been amazing and go the extra mile), so they need to see it when they come home. I am so thankful we do surround ourselves with people who value hard work and being good people so that our children can look at see there are others out there, no matter how few, who don't go through life half-assed.