Teachers

Many blame society's shortcomings on education. Too many people are looking for heroes in all the wrong places. Movie stars, rock musicians, athletes and models aren't heroes: they're celebrities.

Heroes abound in public schools, a fact that doesn't make the news. There is no precedent for the level of violence, drugs, broken homes, child abuse, and crime in today's America. Education didn't create these problems but deals with them every day.

Consider Dave Sanders, the teacher shot to death while trying to shield his students from two youths on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Sanders gave his life, along with 12 students, and other less heralded heroes survived the Colorado blood bath.

Jane Smith, a Fayetteville, NC teacher, was moved by the plight of one of her students, a boy dying for want of a kidney transplant. So this woman told the family of a 14 year old boy that she would give him one of her kidneys. And she did.

Doris Dillon dreamed all her life of being a teacher. She not only made it, she was one of those wondrous teachers who could bring the best out of every single child. One of her fellow teachers in San Jose, California said, "She could teach a rock to read." Suddenly she was stricken with Lou Gehrig's Disease which is always fatal, usually within five years. She asked to stay on the job.... and did. When her voice was affected she communicated by computer. Did she go home? Absolutely not! She is running two elementary school libraries! When the disease was diagnosed, she wrote the staff and all the families that she had one last lesson to teach....that dying is part of living. Her colleagues named her Teacher of the Year.

Bob House, a teacher in Gay, Georgia, tried out for Who Want s to be a Millionaire. After he won the million dollars, a network film crew wanted to follow up to see how it had impacted his life. New Cars? Big new house? Instead, they found both Bob House and his wife still teaching. They explained that it was what they had always wanted to do with their lives and that would not change. The community as both stunned and gratified.

Last year the average school teacher spent $468 of their own money for student necessities. That's a lot of money from the pockets of the most poorly paid teachers in the industrial world.

The average teacher works more hours in nine months than the average 40-hour employee does in a year.