Well this post is going to make me Public Enemy #1…
Most Canadians know that Prime Minister Trudeau was a drama teacher. A lot don’t care to look in to his teaching career any further than that. The Huffington Post reports that Trudeau also taught math, French, and humanities. But even without knowing that his scope expanded beyond drama, it never made sense to me that he’s job shamed for having been a drama teacher. Why denigrate people who make an honest living??? As long as it’s an honest job, it’s worthy of respect regardless of how much or how little prestige comes with the position.
Now that schools are closed due to COVID-19 it’s surprising how many parents are saying that they are homeschooling. Ummm, no. You are just going through a lesson plan that a real teacher came up with. Unless you developed the lesson plan you are not homeschooling. To simplify: If I sing Purple Rain I can’t pass it off as “my” song, it would just be Purple Rain covered by Janice MacGregor. If you go through a lesson plan that someone else came up with you are not homeschooling, you are going through someone else’s work. And after life gets back to normal, if you’re thinking “I handled homeschooling during COVID-19” try coming up with a lesson plan the way that your kid’s real teacher does. Teaching isn’t that easy, is it? Are you still mocking teachers?
As countless parents drone on about the difficulties of “homeschooling” I hope they become more appreciative of real teachers and how much work, time, and energy they put in to being a teacher for a class of 20+ students. And hopefully people will be less likely to job shame teachers regardless of which subject they teach.
Janice MacGregor 