Listen, I'll confess that I'm a bit biased where teachers are concerned because I get to go home to one every day. I've seen how much hard work goes into it, how many hours are spent on lesson plans, marking, field trips, and so on. Calling a teacher a glorified babysitter is sure to start a fight.
And that doesn't even get into all the stuff surrounding teaching that you don't expect to encounter: The politics and the diplomacy with other teachers, administrators, and parents. It's not even remotely easy.
But one of the things that complicates everything is just that the stakes are so high. We're all setting kids up for the future as best we can, but we can't always agree on what's the best way. For one teacher, that disagreement seems to have cost her her job.