Teacher Moms

When we think about the teachers of the world of course the obvious things that come to mind are educators and craftspeople of the world’s future leaders and creators, but if we’re being perfectly honest, we can really call teachers secondary parents. When we send our children off to school while we go about our daily adult lives we are leaving them in the care of adults who are responsible for teaching them, feeding them, making sure they go to the restroom and even disciplining them when they are up to no good. So it is safe to say that the women who carry this responsibility are motherly teachers.

What exactly is a motherly teacher? Well that can mean a couple of things: a teacher with motherly instincts or a teacher who just so happens to be a mother, which is of course very normal. I am thankful to say that I have lived a life surrounded by both.

On average the motherly teacher carries the most basic qualities of a mother: they are always willing to listen to you and get severely aggravated when you don’t listen to them. One minute they are your best friend and the next minute you can’t stand them and they make you want to pull your hair out. In other words, you can’t live with each other, but you also can’t live without each other because the future depends on your union. Let’s not forget that when a teacher gets her new batch of students her facial expression generally resembles that of a mother who is looking at her newborn baby just minutes after giving birth. A class of new students is the equivalent to that of new life and all the new students are the teacher’s little babies.

I swear I’m not being a teacher’s pet when I tell you that one of the strongest women you will ever meet is a teacher to a classroom of children who has children of her own at home. When your everyday life revolves around raising your offsprings and being the secondary caretaker to the offsprings of others, you don’t have all the time in the world, you have to make time. I actually thought about this alot when those teachers of mine would bring their children to class sometimes or had children who I was friends with outside of school. When I was in the first grade in 1999 one of my friends had a mom who came to class a lot. This woman was very friendly with my mom because my mom came to class to spend time with me often as well. Three years later that friend’s mother ended up being my fourth grade teacher and it was a shock to me because I didn’t know this friend’s mother was an educator when we had class together three years prior. During her time as a teacher this friend’s mother was like a second mom to me because we had a typical bump heads all the time relationship, yet still had the utmost love and admiration for each other once the class time was over.

I had many teacher mothers growing up, the ones who took care of us kids in class and then took care of their own offsprings at home. Something I always noticed is that when these teachers would bring their kids around they visibly had the same relationship with their children that all of us kids had with our mothers. It takes alot of time and effort to sustain such a healthy and balanced relationship and I didn’t realize it until I grew up.

Years after graduating high school and even college I’m still close friends with all of these teacher moms and I’m proud to say that everyone of them is still teaching. I’m blessed to say they are still encouraging me, teaching me and supporting me. They have been through some hard times, battles that many of which people are unaware, yet they have stuck to their passions as educators. I hate that it took so long for me to realize how heroic these mothers of the world are to us, but I am glad that I appreciate them alot more. We are truly blessed to have been graced with these additional mothers. We drove them crazy and made them want to rip their hair out, all while they gave us love and knowledge and we would not be who we are today without them.

This is dedicated to all my teacher mothers who helped to shape me into who I am today: Kimberly Struthers Carpenter, Carla Gilchrist, Kris Pass, Sheryl Spivey Finegan, Tara Pidgeon, Melissa Maley and Jennifer Whisman.

And to all the other teachers of the world who have children of their own, this one is for you.