Teachers DO need a degree, right????

As many of you know, a big part of my job is working with teachers to coordinate a coin drive in their schools. My beloved mother is a teacher, and I am certain that she had to first obtain a four year degree before she was allowed to shape the minds of today's youth. What concerns me is that I see no possible way that some of the lovely educators I work with actually completed such a degree.

My first complaint is inattention to detail. In order to sign up their school to participate in the coin drive, teachers are required to first complete and return a very simple, one page registration form. This is important because I need to know how many boxes and how many Dear Parent letters to order for each school. After school name, address, and contact information (which has proven to be much more difficult to correctly answer than one would think), there is a line that says, "Number of classrooms participating:" --- the answer I am looking for here is a NUMBER, hence the word NUMBER in the description. The answer that I get waaaaaay more often than I should is "all" or "entire school."

My second complaint is not double checking their work. The few Einsteins in the group who actually know to write a NUMBER when I ask for NUMBER of participating classrooms instantly earn my love and adoration, however, I'm learning that I may be too liberal with my praise. If a teacher tells me that they need 40 collection boxes, I order 40 collection boxes. Seems simple enough. Until they call me 3 hours into their campaign in a panic saying, "I need 48 boxes, but I only got 40!!!" to which I reply, "I'm sorry - your registration form said you only needed 40" and they say very matter-of-factly, "Well I was just guessing." And how did that guess work out for you? Just fine, because YOU don't have to lift a finger. It's me who has to shift my entire day around to drive 8 boxes out to your school that is inevitably 50 feet from the freaking Utah border!!!!!

My third complaint is skipping over the directions. I know that this service learning project is not a teacher's first priority, and they are helping out of the goodness of their hearts, so I try to make their life as easy as possible where it relates to this coin drive. I provide each and every teacher with a folder complete with creative ideas, a tally sheet, a frequently asked questions page, and instructions on how to use coin star, among other helpful resources. If I had a dollar for every time a teacher called me and asked me EVERY single question on the FAQ page, we wouldn't need a coin drive to meet budget! What irks me even more, though, is when they call to chew me out and say, "The coin star machine is broken. You should really have a note that tells teachers to make a test deposit first!" and I apologetically say, "I'm so sorry! You should have gotten a page of instructions on coin star, and in bold, red print it says 'we highly recommend doing a trial run to make sure the coin star machine is in order' --- was your packet missing that page?" to which I get, "I don't know, I didn't read it." Really?! What happens when your students don't follow the directions? I'm pretty sure they either get a paper with an 'F' on it sent home to be signed and returned, or they spend their recess inside writing paragraphs about FOLLOWING THE DIRECTIONS!

And my final complaint is the wasting of my time with incorrect answers. I had one teacher order 29 boxes for a student body of 32. Knowing that this couldn't possibly be right, I called her to get the correct numbers, but she insisted that they were right. Me: "Your registration form says you need 29 boxes and 32 letters, but that didn't seem right to me." Her: "Nope, you got it. 29 classrooms and 32 students." Me: "32 students in each classroom?" Her: "No - 32 students total." Me: "In your whole school there are only 32 students, but you have 29 classrooms?" Her: "Yep. We're small." --- I still didn't think this was possible, so I gave it a couple days and then I e-mailed her, "Just wanting to confirm - you have 29 classrooms and 32 students in your entire school, right?" and I received a resounding, "That's correct!" So against all of my gut feelings, I ordered her 29 boxes and 32 letters. Fast forward to delivery day - I showed up with the promised supplies and some extra gifts to thank her, and she looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "We don't have enough letters - there are about 200 kids in our school and you only gave me 32. I know I said there were only 32 students, but that was just in my leadership group. I really meant 200 for the whole student body. Sorry. Can you bring more?" It took everything I had not to inflict bodily harm on this woman.

I don't get paid nearly enough.

These are the teachers we have? Really? These are the people who are molding the leaders of tomorrow? No wonder the stock market is in trouble. Pray for us all, people...