Waiting for "wonder woman"

By Nancy Snipes Mosley, Wake County Teacher

​Women of my generation all fondly remember pretending to be Wonder Woman when we were little girls, spinning around like Lynda Carter in our Underoos. For that moment, we could be both princess and hero.

With her recent resurgence into our popular culture, I have acquired new Wonder Woman swag from my family. Some days, I look at myself wearing Wonder Woman PJs in the mirror and think, “Well, this is ironic. I don’t feel like a strong role model, a source of inspiration and power. I feel tired and stressed and hooked on caffeine.”  
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What’s the big deal about Wonder Woman, anyway? She’s warrior and diplomat, goddess and human. She’s strong-willed and compassionate, with an unwavering moral compass. She does have some vulnerability and has suffered loss, but her willingness to make sacrifices for the common good keeps her strong and focused on her mission.

But can she get teenagers to understand the Electoral College, navigate the red tape of organizing an overnight field trip, check a big stack of essays for plagiarism, feed a family of picky eaters, coordinate the sports schedules of a young gymnast and baseball player, and help them both with their homework before bedtime?

Let’s see how Wonder Woman and teachers really compare:

• Teachers also come from a female culture. Teaching is now a co-ed profession, but its history of being a “pink collar” job still affects the conceptions and expectations we have about it. Like mothers, teachers are traditionally expected to be self-sacrificing and put their children above all else. We have little political leverage to improve our situation, especially in anti-union states. Women are also underrepresented in elected offices and leadership positions even within the field of education. There shouldn’t be such a big divide between those who make the decisions about education and those who are in the classroom.
• Teachers don’t have eternal youth. We grow older and take on more family responsibilities. We can’t keep up a superhuman pace year after year, sacrificing all our free time to our students. Growing older is also a strength, though, as it increases our experience and wisdom. Becoming a parent gives you a more complete perspective of what is going on with your students and their families. This is why we need to encourage both teacher retention and longevity.
• Teachers also have skimpy patriotic body armor. It changes over time with the fashions and desires of society, with little regard for what is practical or necessary. These changes correspond directly with how much society respects them for what they do rather than how they appear. Some of Wonder Woman’s superhero friends have enough money to create technologically advanced suits, but she has to rely more on her own superpowers and almost mystic tools. Teachers have to expend a lot of extra personal energy to compensate for lack of resources. Imagine what they could do with full funding.
• Teachers don’t have an invisible jet to cover them from public scrutiny. Everything we do is witnessed and judged by students, parents, administrators, and school systems. For public educators, this list also includes school boards and voters. This increases accountability and gives us data to shine light on inequalities. Unfortunately, this also means that sometimes “push-back” can prevent necessary change.
• Teachers are also held to Hollywood standards. We are increasingly expected to be entertainers as much as educators. Students aren’t inspired if you don’t fit the mold of our society’s favorite archetypes like  “wise and funny older mentor” or “beautiful maternal figure”. Encouraging schools to compete just makes this trend worse. When we are more concerned with market share than the public good, we may sacrifice what is right with what is popular.
• Teachers don’t have a lasso of truth. We can’t force a student or policymaker to give us the real story. We have to decipher meaning from a variety of context clues and interactions over time. With our students, this isn’t always a negative. We’d rather build trust so they reveal the truth than coerce it out of them unwillingly. With policymakers, however, transparency is a matter of the public trust. Education policies that are covering up hidden agendas to privatize or resegregate schools must be unmasked.
• Teachers also have a secret identity and second job. Sociologists call the extra responsibilities of working full time and having primary responsibility for child-rearing the “second shift”. For teachers, this can come in the form of extra hours dedicated to going above-and-beyond meeting the needs of their students. It can also be the expectation that you will be the default stay-at-home parent when school isn’t in session. For some, it is a literal second job taken on to make ends meet. Like other care-giving professions, you can never really turn it off which can be emotionally draining.
• Teachers aren’t supposed to just be strong, we are supposed to make our students strong. Our job isn’t just to deflect bullets and cover them from shrapnel during an attack so that they can proceed with their everyday life when the threat is neutralized. Our job is to prepare them for everyday life and inspire them to help make the world better. This involves a special set of tools and skills, ones that require investment and reinvention to evolve as the world changes. It is also something that takes time and may not produce instant results.
• Teachers also have bracelets that create a force-field to deflect attacks. Wonder Woman’s were originally called the bracelets of submission, representing the strength to constrain ego for the sake of humanity. This is beneficial when working with children, who require us to do what is best for them even when it might cause us pain. Unfortunately, man’s world can sometimes exploit this tendency in teachers. Teachers themselves often misunderstand when it might be necessary to take off the cuffs to fight an enemy like bigotry, greed, or poverty.
• Teachers need to assemble a Justice League. Public education is a form of social justice, and public educators need strong allies who are fighting for the same thing. This shouldn’t be about partisan politics. We need public education advocates on both sides of the aisle to agree to work together on this issue despite their differences on others. Teachers are always being asked to do more, “for the sake of the children.” Well, it’s time we demand the same of the whole community.

Teachers aren’t superheroes, but they have power to be strong role models for young people. This means showing them what it means to listen to others while also speaking up for yourself. Serving the community while also taking care of your own needs. Bearing your responsibilities while also staying in control of your life. Doing what is best for your own family and other families too.

So, go ahead and wear that Wonder Woman symbol with pride. Let it be a reminder that we do something heroic when we take care of the next generation, and that we must be strong enough to demand what we need for the job. If you don’t have anything with the WWs emblazoned on it, any red shirt will do.