Having been a high school teacher for more than 11 years now, I’ve heard from my peers their general complaints of how little respect we receive and how grossly underpaid we are, and I’ve certainly agreed with them.

Moreover, I’ve heard the general public offer broad comments of how noble it is to be a teacher and how grossly underpaid teachers are, and I’ve certainly appreciated them.

However, I don’t believe that most individuals truly believe this type of empathetic commentary simply because, deep down, they do not perceive teachers as professionals. Moreover, as difficult as it is for me to say this, I don’t know that we teachers, as a collective group, actually deserve that label.

Miyamoto Musashi, a famous Japanese samurai, once wrote, “Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.” I would add that an individual’s perception is so strong that it becomes that person’s truth. Thus, no matter if the object or issue being perceived is “distant” to the individual’s knowledge base or “close” to the person’s heart, what one perceives to be true is true.

I will now endeavor to take Musashi’s sage advice by taking “a distanced view” of the vocation of teacher. With this attempted objective viewpoint in mind, I wish to delve into the reasons that I believe teachers are not (or possibly even shouldn’t be) considered true “professionals” in society’s eyes:

“Bad press. How many times have we picked up the newspaper to read about another teacher, either male or female, being accused of sexual relations with a student? To answer, there have been so many that E! Entertainment Television has recently created an entire “True Hollywood Story Investigates” program entitled “Hot for Student.” Such accounts of individual teachers taking advantage of both their profession and their students taint the societal perception for the rest of us. It may not be fair, but it’s the truth.

“Vacation days. Society believes that teachers receive a total of three months (including both winter and summer breaks) “off” with little more to do than soak up the grand glory of nothingness. Again, this perception is not the educator’s truth based on what so many of us do with that time for professional development. On the other hand, I don’t know many other “professionals” who receive 90 days “off” every year either.

“Working with children. Professionals work with other adults, period. Baby sitters, glorified or not, work with children. Again, this perception is hardly fair, especially based on the education and the workload teachers have, but that societal perception still rings true to so many individuals.

“Unions. As many positive changes as the Washington Education Association has helped implement for the cause of its members over the years, the WEA is still a closed-shop union. And the term “union” has rather blue-collar connotations. To society, unions are not for lawyers, doctors, accountants, or entrepreneurs; simply put, “professionals” don’t need unions.

“Attire. Professionals dress, well, professionally. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean a three-piece suit every day, but it does mean more than blue jeans and a T-shirt. Let’s face it: How many of us would feel that we had chosen the correct doctor or attorney if he or she showed up to a meeting with us wearing anything less than business attire? Zero.

Some of these reasons could be easily remedied by the teachers themselves; others cannot. But to offer solutions to all of these perceived unprofessional attributes is not the purpose of this piece; to attempt to offer a “distant view” is.

My conviction is that most teachers, when they discuss a lack of respect in their chosen vocation, are connotatively referring to their low salaries. In addition, I also believe that most teachers have their cause-effect relationship between money and professionalism structured in a “cart-before-the-horse” sort of way; that is, we as teachers need to start searching for ways to remedy these social perceptions of unprofessionalism first.

Then, and only then, would society willingly grant teachers higher salaries as the direct result of finally being accepted as the professionals that we are.