COMMENTARY — I was once asked by a reader if I come from a family of journalists. I do not. If anything, I am the black sheep of the family, because I come from a family of teachers.

Well, there are a lot of engineers and cartoonists, too. But, mostly teachers.

My grandmother, aunt, and mother are all elementary school teachers, which meant I grew up learning about the process.

Do you know what AMSTI is? I do, and they’re having a training session for it in Gardendale soon. It’s kind of a big deal. Do you know what DIBELS stands for? Okay, I don’t either, but I chuckle every time Mom says it.

When imaginative kids are very, very young, they often wonder what teachers do when they go home, or even if they have homes at all. I was not one of those children, because I knew precisely what teachers did when they went home:

More schoolwork.

Furthermore, their houses display evidence of their work obsession, with piles of cartoon numbers and stacks of Caldecott-winning books. Do you know what teachers do during the summer?

More schoolwork.

During those hot months, they clean out their classrooms and stack the contents in their basements, rotating tubs and buckets and trunks full of seasonal materials every three months, often hauling them to and from school on their own.

It occasionally made for a cluttered childhood (and adulthood, for that matter; she may never retire), but it helped me see what a teacher’s life is. It helped me know what a truly dedicated teacher looked like. It wasn’t that her job had broken through the floodgates and spilled over into her life; rather she had gladly made room for her job in her life because, to her, it was her ministry.

I didn’t become a teacher (although the idea had crossed my mind, and is filed in a folder in my brain marked “maybe?”), but my mother’s zeal for her profession inspired my own. She encouraged me to find a job I was good at and that I felt compelled to do well. My mother says she doesn’t define herself by her job, but I’m not sure how honest that is. I don’t think she’d feel like a whole person if she hadn’t had the chance to teach.

Before my job as a reporter with the North Jefferson News, I had the opportunity to substitute teach in an effort to make some money, which was an endeavor fraught with futility. If you think teachers are underpaid, you should see the checks subs get. Ultimately, though, it allowed me to glimpse the life teachers have, both inside and outside the classroom. It inspired me. Even though I didn’t become a teacher, I still followed in my mother’s footsteps and found a job that was exceedingly stressful and pays in peanuts. But, like her, I feel proud of the work I’ve done at the end of the day.

The past few years have been rough on teachers, and Jefferson County teachers are no stranger to the struggle. Pro-ration has effectively nullified funding for teachers’ individual classrooms. But, many of them just roll with the punches and buy things out of their own pockets, because they know it has to be done. I’m sure most parents can think of a teacher that’s wired that way, and they can only hope their children are entering such a classroom.

As your children enter their new classrooms for the first time this school year, be thankful that there are wise, grizzled educators that haven’t been burned out by the years of budget cuts and long hours.

Wish for heroic teachers.