• National Defence Force,

• National Intelligence Agency, or

• South African Secret Service; or

• unpaid volunteers working for charity.

I feel that teachers and especially preschool and primary school teachers need to be included in this list.

I am actually not sure what the law is around National Defence Force Members but I am thinking it probably prohibits leave, striking and really should include something about never being permitted leave during school holidays.

I think school teachers should only get leave over weekends.  And even there I think I am being generous.

I am willing to give them Sunday’s off, but this does not include Sunday School Teachers – them let’s keep in school.  With the kids.

Often over weekends I have thought to myself, good gonads, why don’t teachers work on a Saturday, that is really when you need to drop your child off at school – or in a bush – or an abandoned mine.

Just somewhere where there is a good chance they will still be in 4 to 8 hours.

Grocery shopping with kids is an exercise in glancing at other moms shopping with their kids and deciding who is more miserable.  Them or me.

School holidays are the bane of my life!  Well to be honest it is not the school holidays, it is the fact that school is closed.  I think we can still keep the term school holidays, and keep teachers in school.

What good are teachers if they are not in school?

No good actually -technically they are teachers with no one to teach.  I really think that if that is what drives you to erm drive to work each day, then as parents we need to insist that they keep their skills sharp.  By remaining at school teaching.  And available.

Teaching is a calling.  It is not a nansy-pansy job.  Get behind me here people!!

As a parent I have done my duty.  I have supplied products for the teachers to teach.  Producing three children did not come without it’s risks and inconveniences.

I held out because I knew one day I could send them to school.

And really is that not the day all parents live for?

Moms don’t cry because Rita is starting school, they cry because they are so frick’n relieved and feel guilty now that they can start drinking at 12h00 sharp – but they shouldn’t – we have support groups for that.  The guilt and the drinking – sometimes it is the same group, we give it names like “book club.”

I have fought the hoardes at Woolworths to purchase the wrong fitting white shirt and grey pants for school for my kids – so they all look the same.

I think similiar looking small people make it totally unnecessary for teacher to learn children’s names.

If my teachers worked over weekends and school holidays, I would totally forgive her/him calling all the boys Johnny and the girls, well call them Mandy, which can be shorted to Mands, or Burt – listen as long as they come when a name is called, that is fine with me.

I have three of them, and I seldom get the names right – and without fail there is always at least one child near me at any given time, which proves that remembering their exact names is not actually that important.

I am not sure how to get this campaign onto it’s legs.  I am sure it involves some blue sky thinking.  A shift in paradigms.  Maybe even something about a golden thread, and an out of the box idea.

Either way, I feel strongly about teachers.  We need more.  Let’s increase their hours, reduce their holidays and encourage it as a profession.  The more work, the more teachers we need – the more teachers we can get and we can work towards a point of removing “school holidays” and maybe even “Saturday’s off!”

Whose behind me on this?