We’re over a month into summer vacation and many of you are off on trips. Some teachers are traveling as well, but many more are employed throughout the area. They’re tapping beer at festivals, tutoring, teaching summer school, clerking, selling, painting, and working hundreds of other odd jobs to get through to September 15. As nice as it may sound to have the summer off, income has the summer off too, unless you can afford to have some skimmed off every paycheck during the rest of the year. By the first week in September, the wallet can get pretty thin and the balance in the checkbooks down to double digits. So what are teachers who are on the 10 month pay plan, had to get new roofing, and whose twenty year old car needs a new used transmission to do? In an effort to supply ideas to any empathic folks willing to help out teachers new to the job, single or just couldn't make it 12 months on their ambitious 10 month fantasy budgets, I’ve created some job opportunities that could make everyone big winners. Here are a few:
-Hire a teacher to take your child shopping for school supplies. Teachers know. They can guarantee no markers that smell like flavors, no glittery pencils, no multicolored pens and no talking folders. They make children cry. Kids argue over these items to the point where teachers have to go through markers and extract all the “Laser Lemons” or “Meatball Madness” and hide them about four feet up over a counter until “Food Smelling School Supply Day“.
-Hire a teacher to help your kids buy shoes. They’ll get Velcro for everyone, no rubber gardening shoes that children fall out of or drop while hanging upside down on the playground equipment, no ties because half the kids can‘t tie and the other half don‘t even notice the foot of dirty, frayed string dragging along the ground. Although there is some satisfaction in headshaking and reminding (as we pick children up from the floor), “I told you to tie your shoes about a million times,“ we don’t like to see kids fall.
-Hire a teacher to pick a backpack that your child can actually carry by him or herself, one with enough pockets for money and notes but not enough compartments to smuggle in little toys, hair decorations, jewelry or expensive, breakable things they bring from home that you don’t realize are missing.
-Hire a teacher to throw your next children’s party. They know how to keep things short and avoid pitfalls that create situations resulting in crying, pouting, arguing or hiding. That goes for the kids, too. They know to serve all identical cupcakes, white with white frosting. If there must be a beverage, they know to just pick one kind, clear. Everyone gets the exact same everything because life is much easier that way.
Along with that there are also short one-hour lessons we can offer on fib detection, fake crying identification, manipulation recognition and how to make placebo ice-packs. Workshops are available for teaching parents how to ask children questions they won’t answer, “Nothing.” or “I don’t know!“ to.
There are tricks.
So if someday in the next month it’s your child’s teacher who hands you that delivery pizza, or spritzes your windshield in a surprise entrepreneurial cleaning, understand that it’s probably been a long, under budgeted summer.
So kids, pay attention during math; you might be a teacher someday.
