Imagine going to see your child's pediatrician and, while he's giving you the diagnosis, asking him to "hold on a sec" while you answer a text.

Or, how about this. You have an appointment with a lawyer and bring the gang along, allowing them to roam unsupervised around his office, playing with things off his shelves, opening desk drawers, pushing buttons on his computer.

Or, you have a meeting scheduled with a realtor, but show up 20 minutes late and get fussy when  you find out he moved on to the next appointment. So fussy, in fact, that you stand outside his office interrupting his current meeting, demanding to be "squeezed in."

Preposterous, right? Yet, these three random samples are just the tip of the iceberg of what teachers deal with when we have conferences with our parents.

What's up with this? My first-grade teacher had a parent bring a snack for herself and  her daughter, which they ate during the conference without asking permission or offering any to the teacher. They then left their trash on the table when the conference was over. "I felt like I was being treated like a servant," she said.

It just makes me wonder why the general attitude towards teachers is more comparable to how we view wait staff at a low-end restaurant instead of realizing these are the people massaging our children's brains all day long. Not to mention their self-esteem, attitude towards learning, and overall well-being. These day, most teachers have a master's degree, and many of us are Ph.D. material. So how come we get no respect?

I began asking around. A few people mentioned the "luxurious lifestyle," meaning summer, spring and winter break. OK, yes, this rocks. None of us is going to deny that. But, here's the flip side to that: When we are working, we average MORE THAN 10-hour days. In fact, we clock an average of nine hours at school, then work two to three more at home. Our job isn't a cut-and-dried thing. We're always teachers. We're always thinking about, talking about, planning for and thinking about our plans for your kids and how we're going to teach them. Think about it ... there are stores for us to go to on weekends to shop for stuff to buy (with our own money) for school, and we do. Enough to keep three different chains operating in just this region alone. Have you ever been around a group of teachers after hours? What were they talking about? I'd put money on kids and teaching.

The other answer seems to be you all think we get to play around with kids all day. I laughed out loud at this one, because we strive to make learning fun to kids. We didn't know we were pulling the wool over your eyes too. All that thinking I mentioned above is filtered into how to make our learning environment attractive and enticing to children. The kids feel they're playing sometimes, but I assure you, we're working our tails off.

So I'm asking you, readers, to fill in the blanks. What are we missing? Why do so many parents feel the way they do towards us?  In the meantime, I'm putting together a list of dos and don'ts (you all seem to love those) on conference etiquette, just as a reference point. I'll even make it print-friendly. If you ask a teacher, she'd be happy to laminate it for you.

By Sharon Linde, Education Blogger for SmartParenting