Following through on commitments is one of those life lessons that we learn – one of those values that are taught by parents and mentors. You don’t quit a sport mid-season. You don’t walk out on a job mid-shift. When did it become acceptable to quit something in the middle of a project, especially when others are depending on you?
When we begin to do something, such as play a sport, our teammates depend on us and if we quit, we’re not just quitting, we’re letting our team down. You put the coaches and the team in a predicament from having to find someone to fill your spot and having someone new to play with that they are not used to playing with.
If everyone was to quit what they are doing, nothing would improve and things would start to fall apart. If construction workers were to stop everything that they were doing and just quit, the roads would be bad, bridges would be dangerous from not being maintained, and there wouldn’t be enough houses for people to live in.
When all is said and done, it is important to complete something that you have started because it can affect people in many different ways.
This school year, students are struggling due to several high school teachers not finishing out their contracts. People felt like we were getting abandoned and felt like they were just giving up on us. A student-teacher relationship is a special one. You develop a relationship with a teacher as a trusted adult and it hurts when (for whatever reason) that relationship is abandoned suddenly. There are many logical and maybe even good reasons for a teacher to leave suddenly, but the effects are still there.
I believe that if you begin something, you should finish it, and that goes for anything. Another thing is whenever you sign something such as a contract you must follow it, especially when it comes to students’ future. When teachers decide to leave in the middle of the year with barely any notice, it puts the students behind on what they need to know. Subs try their best to teach us what we were supposed to learn, but it’s not the same as if the teacher were to be there. For some of the assignments, we were just given “busy work” and that doesn’t teach you anything.
No one will deny that a teacher’s job is extremely difficult and absolutely vital to the success of their students. Even in this day and age of advanced technology and online learning, the teacher in the classroom is still the most influential for student success.
If this experience teaches us anything, it is that teachers are absolutely the most critical part of our day and our future lives. They are here to guide us and basically help us choose what we want our future to look like. Without them, nothing would ever get done.