1. Oh, yeah, for sure, the exhaustion is constant, and it doesn’t ever really get easier. We’d usually make a joke about “Free Post-its, though!” here, except those aren’t free for you in your house, so, uh, just, yes. It’s an exhausting job.

2. Yep, we know. You miss us. We feel the love. And don’t worry, we have completely forgotten about the time last year when we overhead you telling your partner that we “could at least try to look excited about the kids’ recorder concert.”

3. That’s correct. As you are no doubt realizing, there is no correlation between the amount of time you spend planning a lesson and the amount of interest your kids show in it. Sometimes you spent five seconds typing “pretty state capitol domes” into Google, and they are captivated for hours. Other times, you work until 3 AM building a model of your state capital out of stale bread and toothpicks, and they wander away from it after 20 seconds.

4. Just an FYI, that even when our classes are going amazing, we generally only have 50% of the students’ attention. So if you have two kids, and you have one of them engaged, you’re on par with us.

5. Remember how we often promised “individual conferences”? It sounds impressive, but it’s really just conversing directly with a child. Give that a try.

6. Oh yeah, it’s absolutely true that they are doing that only to get a response out of you. However, it’s also absolutely true that they have the capacity for doing that for as long as it takes to get a response out of you. Redirect.

7. Yep, yep, we teach 10 to 15 times the number of kids you’re currently trying to teach. All at once. Usually on own. We don’t know how we do it, either.

8. Now you know why we show the film version of The Crucible in 40-minute increments over five days.

9. Honestly? Sometimes we just give them paper and crayons and tell them to draw what they’re feeling — even high schoolers.

10. Remember when parents in our district got all upset about every student getting their own iPad? “The kids will be on them all the time!” they said. Please, join us in sob-laughs about this now.

11. Sorry, we have no idea how to respond when your kids scream, “You’re NOT my teacher; you’re just my mom!” However, we do have some ideas for how to respond to “You’re NOT my mom; you’re just my teacher!” if those would help.

12. It just occurred to us that while we can call you when things get bad, you can’t really call us. Wow, is that a bug in the system, or what? Sorry!

13. We appreciate it, but getting paid a “trillion billion dollars” after we all come back from this isn’t necessary. We’d just like to make what a few senators made from selling off their stock after being pre-warned about the approaching global pandemic and not bothering to tell us.

14. Sure, we’ll let the gym teachers know you’re especially sorry for how you used to dismiss them as having “easy jobs.” And the art teachers. And the custodians. And the cafeteria workers. And… well, everyone.

15. Honestly, we can’t wait until your kids are our daily problem again, too.