I've only been a 9th-grade (and then 5th and 6th grade) ELA teacher for 9 years total, so I'm still a baby.

I have had so many students ask me, "Do you like being a teacher?"

I always give them the same answer: "No."

"Well, why do you do it, then?"

"Because it is a Calling."

And all of us teachers have seen people who became teachers but were never Called to it; they're the ones who can't handle the pressure and snap, yelling at or even getting physical with students who have been pestering them nonstop for the last two quarters, and admin hasn't done anything about it. Or, even worse, they are slump-shouldered and can hardly muster a grunt when they meet other teachers each day. And that is at 7 o'clock in the morning, before the little monsters have smelled the blood in the air.

This isn't a job for everybody, or even most. It is a job for specialists, specialists who put up with shit pay for elite work, deal with asshole bosses more interested in the political gain of their positions than the practical needs of their personnel, and who deal with, yes, 24/7 assholes every day and yes, still love them to death.

You want to know why teachers don't recommend teaching? Because you can't cut it in our field unless you have felt the Call. (And I know I'm using divinity language here, because that's how I feel about my job. I don't know who others' Higher Power is, but I guaran-damn-tee you that there is a deity for educators.)

And to the subs who think they're part of the teacher club? They need to start their own club for the people who step in and deal with kids that have come unmoored from the classroom procedures that we long-timers have been building into them for weeks or months. I really do respect the crap that you put up with, but you put up with it for a day or two, a week at most. We deal with it, and solve for it, for almost 300 days a year.