Comics 17

“Finally. A true representation of an appropriate teacher-student relationship.”

Even as a teacher myself, we (teachers) must maintain appropriate emotional and activity-based distances from our students; we are not responsible for raising a student, only guiding them through his/her education (and nowadays, doing everything we can to ensure he/she returns home safely each afternoon.) Each adult in a student’s life represents a different area of specialty or mastery; reading, writing, and arithmetic are a teacher’s. And just because I admit to only caring about a student’s educational success, does not mean I do not care enough about the student; it simply means all of my energy and support is channeled into the area I am responsible to cover, my expertise. 

With hopes of not offending anyone, I will abridge this area of my argument, although we know these professions cannot be explained so simply: we do not expect our police officers to do anything else other than protect us; our firefighters to put out our fires; our doctors to heal us; our lawyers to represent us and so on. While a basic tenet of every other single occupation revolves upon not intentionally creating a conflict of interest, within the teaching profession, why are teachers expected to purposely foster one? Please ponder.

If every adult in a student’s life concentrated on his/her specific job (or jobs in the case of a parent(s) or guardian(s)), the student would prosper; however, since this is an idealistic view of reality, society has placed this responsibility on teachers. Fair? Not in the slightest. 

Consider these statistics below:

(TIME statistics based on a student sleeping 8 hours, spending 8 hours at school, and spending 8 hours at home; AMOUNT based on 20 students a class for elementary (1 class per teacher a year); 25 students a class for middle school (4 classes per teacher a year); and 30 students a class for high school (5 classes per teacher a year); BOTH are based on rough estimates of how much actual time a student spends with a teacher depending on class switches, lunch, specials, and other extracurricular activities):

TIME

• An average elementary school teacher (based on a scale of 6 hours a day for 180 days a year) spends roughly 1080 hours (or 135-8 hour days; the family spends the other 230-8 hour days) with a student
• An average middle school teacher (based on a scale of 3 hours a day for 180 days a year) spends roughly 540 hours (or 67.5-8 hour days; the family spends the other 297.5-8 hour days) with a student
• An average high school teacher (based on a scale of 2 hours a day for 180 days a year) spends roughly 360 hours (or 45-8 hour days; the family spends the other 320-8 hour days) with a student

AMOUNT

(These calculations based on students in scheduled classes over thirty-five years of service)

• An average elementary school teacher encounters over 700 students
• An average middle school teacher encounters over 3500 students
• An average high school teacher encounters over 5250 students 

If most adults struggle with one student, why does society expect teachers to "wear so many hats" or raise so many students in so little time? 

I do not have an answer to the neglect a lot of our students face each and every day, but placing this responsibility on a teacher (or any other single student-based professional) is detrimental to society, most importantly a disservice to the student, because even if a student has the best, most productive teachers throughout his/her educational career, a teacher cannot fulfill every basic need a student requires.

I will continue to fight the good fight because I believe education is the most important element in the formula for personal and professional happiness and I enjoy spreading my knowledge and passing down my skills to future generations, but having others formulate a realistic view of teacher influence in a student’s life, or craft a realistic view of appropriate teacher-student relationships and boundaries, would lend itself to possibly generating more constructive dialogue on the subject.