First of all, congratulations for the job you do, the most important one in any country, the least rewarded too, at least in Venezuela. Enjoy your more than deserved vacations.
Ironically, now that teachers get paid less, they have to work more. As you point out, teachers have to play the role of counselors, psychologist, psyquiatrists, social workers, parents, friends, and artists (to work on all the boards that must be put out in display so that people who care little about them can see that their children's school is running smoothly).
I can relate to your frsutration
It is so much what we sometimes want to do for our students, it is so much impotence that you feel when you fight but you can not change their reality of life as we would like.
We could all have done more, but when the system is designed to keep children ignorant and teachers busy worrying about food or medicine; when there is a legal aparatus working to modify all laws to favor an ideological agenda instead of the children the system is supposed to serve; when you have colleagues who kneel before any authority, even the most immoral ones, there is no much for us to do, exept keep our sanity and our love for the art of education.
If we did our job well, that seed of inquiry and intellectual curiosity will bear fruits sooner or later.
RE: ADSactly Reflections: Stories and Faces