“Being an education major is so easy.”

“You’re a glorified babysitter.”

“No offense, but if you’re an elementary education major, you’re probably stupid.”

I’m done keeping my mouth shut.

I’m sick of people going around thinking that it’s so easy to become a teacher. That what we are doing is super easy, that you can just do the bare minimum and still get away with a degree in education. I’m sick of people thinking that elementary ed majors do nothing but sit around and play games with students all day. I’m sick of people thinking writing a lesson plan is so stupidly simple, that you can just do anything you want in a classroom.

You can’t.

Not if you want to keep your job and have students who actually learn something. You can’t just do the bare minimum in education. You have to bust your butt, because god forbid that these students don’t learn anything. You can’t just pop in a movie or sit them down to a lecture, and then give them a test and have that be it.

Newsflash! IT’S NOT THAT SIMPLE. You need to make sure your students are learning what they need to learn. You need to make sure that they have what it takes to get out there in the world and get into a good college so that they can get a good job. SCHOOL IS IMPORTANT. It’s how we learn to interact with one another, understand social norms and how to basically function. Don’t sit there and tell me that you can write up a lesson plan in two minutes. You can’t.

You have standards that you need to meet and then you need to make it interesting enough for the students to actually want to pay attention. Then, you need to have them present back to you that they learned that information. Some didn’t get it? Have fun re-teaching the lesson to those who didn’t. You need to keep control in the classroom.

God bless elementary ed majors. They have to deal with younger students who don’t always know how to pay attention, or who get easily distracted. I took the “easier” route. And, even then, I am left with the responsibility of making sure these students are still paying attention, and not sitting there on their phones texting. I’m doing this because it is my one passion. I’m doing this because I want to inspire students. I’m doing this because I care.

I have met one too many people who are going into education who couldn’t care less. This is just a job for them because they had no idea what else to do with their degree. That terrifies me. Because I know that those are the kinds of teachers who make kids hate learning. The ones who kill their passion, who make the kids think, “If they don’t care, why should I?” Those are the ones who inspire students to simply scrape by, because they can.

And that’s how they choose to live the rest of their lives: just scraping by. I was lucky enough to get teachers who always expected better from their students. Who always knew we could do better than what we were putting out. They offered help to those who needed it. They didn’t just sit back and watch us fall flat on our faces, but they didn’t carry us through it either. They cared. I care.

And I’m not sorry to say that if my student had one of these people as their teacher, I would request that they have a new one immediately. I’m not allowing my child’s failure to come from your lack of desire to do what I, and so many others, are busting our butts to do. If you don’t care about bettering someone’s education, get the hell out of our program.

We’d be happy to replace you.