Many of you will burn out because you're expected to do something you can't do for people who won't do their job.

titular sentence is for everyone, but this is especially for new teachers. I've been very kind of lucky because I've never had more than 15 students in any class, but my school went virtual for the first half of this year and we only had one student in-person. I've been doing this for 20 years now, and it was the most enjoyable year I've had in my entire teaching career. I was able to make every single lesson perfect for that one student, and I could do that because there was only one. Think about how much more one on one time you can give one student compared to 30. <br><br>Now, with this in mind, think about the kinds of children who usually need the most help. They're low-level, especially low-functioning, and/or low-income. They can only be so successful as an adult no matter what you do. It doesn't matter how much potential you see in them, it's irrelevant how much they improve, and it doesn't matter how hard you work to help them. Someone who is low-functioning will never have the capacity to be high-functioning. Someone from low-income will struggle because of their environment. You can only do so much to help them; the vast majority of their successes are going to come from somewhere else. But you're going to spend most of your time on them because they *need* more of your time, and that means your higher-level students will be neglected. <br><br>Worse, you're going to have kids with major behavioral issues that may require an aide be in the classroom with them all the time. That aide *will not be there,* and if they are, they won't interact with the kid anyway. You will have to deal with the kid when they're being violent, destructive, interruptive, or otherwise uncooperative, and there will be nothing you can do to stop it that will work for more than a day or two.<br><br>You're going to do everything you can, probably as much or more than any teacher before you, and you will barely see a difference in the life of your kids. You will be the most involved teacher, the hardest-working teacher, the most loving teacher, the most supportive teacher, the most inspirational teacher they will ever have, and you will burn out because of it. <br><br>You will do this for little pay and even less recognition. You will have parents who won't bother to show up to parent-teacher conferences, who won't sign your communications with them, who won't make sure their kids do their homework or study for a test. You will have administrators breathe down your necks, making sure you're teaching curriculum to kids who can't even do the minimum work necessary to pass your class, and you will be blamed when they inevitably fail. You will be blamed for giving them inappropriate lessons when they don't even know how to do the minimum necessary to participate in class. You will have kids who literally cannot read or do basic math, who can't sit still or be quiet because of their ADHD, who can't communicate with you because of their Autism, and you'll be expected to adapt to their needs while still giving the appropriate lessons every other kid who doesn't have these issues needs. It doesn't matter that you can't, because you're expected to.<br><br>And as you burn out, you will make mistakes you used to not make because you were so tired. Because you're so tired, you'll get more and more upset as the same problems come up over and over and over again, and eventually you'll have a breakdown and go nuclear on a kid who was doing something insignificant. You'll slap or push or yell at a kid who was doing something they shouldn't do, and you'll either quit or be fired because of it. You will have your self-respect and your pride stripped away from you because you were expected to do something you couldn't do for people who wouldn't do *their* job, and you'll either hate yourself or hate the system for it.<br><br>Welcome to teaching.