These were the comments of a schoolteacher who was deemed to be very successful in the classroom. One wonders if these sentiments are indicative of what most successful and highly effective teaching professionals feel about their jobs. If the education field expects to elevate the teaching profession in ways that attract the highest qualified and highly competent graduates and professionals, then we’ll have to implement incentives, rewards, and systems that support the development and routine activities of classroom teachers so they don’t become so overwhelmed, underappreciated, and underpaid, to a point that they want to quit the profession altogether. The greatest recruiting and training efforts in the world will prove meaningless if school districts and education stakeholders are unable to provide teaching professionals with the tools and pedagogical flexibility necessary for them to be effective in their classrooms.

Instructors deserve to know that administrators and parents alike appreciate and understand the time and teaching constraints that they are confronted with on a daily basis. They must certainly be rewarded and compensated for the seemingly endless schedules they maintain -- planning lessons, responding to parents, evaluating students, and completing the volumes of administrative paperwork. Anyone who has spent time in a classroom knows how easy it is to feel overwhelmed at managing a room full of students who themselves face scores of distractions and choices, inside and outside of school. In an era where there is increased emphasis on accountability and testing, it’s increasingly important that school leaders develop new ways to incentivize the efforts of schoolteachers who are proving to be successful leaders, managers, and instructors of students across the learning spectrum. The changes occurring throughout K-12 public education must be teacher-centric as well as student-centric, especially since these are the two most critical stakeholder groups as it relates to the academic success of students and schools.