Let’s pick up where we left off last week.

Yes, teachers have amusing – sometimes even hilarious – stories about their adventures.

Yet until you’ve stood in teachers’ shoes, you have no idea how hard the job can be.

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Is teaching the hardest job there is?

No, of course not.

Harder jobs aren’t hard to imagine.

Imagine if you can – which you can’t really do if you haven’t experienced it – what it must be like to be in the military with enemy forces trying to kill you.

Imagine if you can – which you can’t really do if you haven’t experienced it – what it must be like to be a law-enforcement officer, or a firefighter, or an emergency-medical technician on one of their harder days.

Imagine if you can – which you can’t really do if you haven’t experienced it – what it must be like to undertake truly back-breaking manual labor.

Imagine if you can – which you can’t really do if you haven’t experienced it – what it must be like to work in a truly poor country where you are trying to help people survive. Just survive.

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Teaching is hard in other ways.

Those who teach in elementary or secondary schools probably have, at any one time, 15 to 30 pupils in their charge.

Teachers have to know their subjects and be able to convey them to each pupil in the class.

Part of successfully conveying subjects to people of any age is an ability to be both interesting and interested: Interesting as a presenter and interested in both the subject and the audience.

The former is even harder than it used to be, because audiences in general, including audiences of pupils, have shorter attention spans than they once did.

Please ask any teacher about that.

In addition, each pupil is a different personality, has a different aptitude, and comes from different circumstances.

As for aptitudes, you wouldn’t want to live in a house that this columnist “built.” Or drive a car whose engine this columnist “overhauled.” The house wouldn’t stand, the car wouldn’t run, and neither would be safe. At least not for long. Probably not at all.

As for circumstances, some pupils have the good fortune of coming from solid, supportive families.

Some don’t. It can be harder for teachers to reach pupils who lack such good fortune.

Indeed, two of the greater challenges teachers face are (1) shortened attention spans and (2) the decay of the family in general as a social unit.

Neither of those is teachers’ doing.

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And consider this: By the time pupils are 18 years old, they’ve spent about 10 percent of their time in a classroom and about 90 percent elsewhere.

The 10 percent figure sounds too low, doesn’t it? But it’s not. Please run the numbers. Children who go to half-day pre-Kindergarten and full-day school from Kindergarten through 12th grade in effect spend 13¢ of those 18 years in school. They do so on about half of the days in a year. And they’re in a classroom for however many hours per day.

Thus, looking at time alone, school isn’t the primary influence on children.

Nevertheless, some people are quick to blame teachers every time something goes wrong with children.

Mary can’t read. For that, some people are quick to blame the teacher.

Johnny can’t do math. For that, some people are quick to blame the teacher.

Sometimes the teacher really can do better.

Yet often the challenge lies elsewhere. Younger pupils don’t exactly have a leg up if, for example, their primary “activity” from birth until their school years was sitting in front of a television with no one hardly ever pulling them away from the television and reading to them; teaching them letters, numbers, colors, shapes, days, months, seasons, or how to tell time; taking them to interesting places, such as a local library or a local park; or having them play with other children.

Nor do any pupils exactly have a leg up if, for example, no one at home regularly and sufficiently (1) reinforces what they learn in school, (2) checks on their homework, or (3) otherwise supports their teachers in particular or their schools in general.

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Yes, teaching can be a hard job.

Teaching is one of the two hardest jobs Randy Elf has ever had.

COPYRIGHT ç 2022 BY RANDY ELF