[danudey]

We were extremely lucky to have a great K teacher who really wanted to work with us and our son to help him through his difficult time adjusting to school. We worked with him quite a bit, and by the "end of the year" (i.e. spring break, when lockdown started), he was processing his feelings of overwhelmedness much better, and going to her (and just collapsing into a heap in her lap) when he felt overwhelmed.

Compare that to a friend's son, who is the same age as ours but has some developmental delays of some type (I assume). Their teacher told them that they had to "get this dealt with"; in other words, "fix your kid so I don't have to deal with him". Not exactly a welcoming and comforting environment for a child who needs to be met halfway.

I mentioned this anecdote to our son's teacher and her first comment was "wow... is she an older teacher?" And yes, she was. She's been working with kids for 30 years, probably isn't as flexible in terms of learning strategies as younger teachers are, and, probably even worse, has been underpaid (and under-respected) for that whole time, so she's surely just burnt out and waiting for retirement at this point.

Maybe if teaching paid decent money we'd have more teachers who could put in the time and emotional energy to nurture their students, rather than just putting them through the pipeline, and who wouldn't get so cynical and short-tempered by the end of their career.