This past week was Teacher Appreciation Week, with Tuesday being Teacher Appreciation Day. In our school we got reaffirmed by the PTSA, the administration, and the students. We had a very nice luncheon on Tuesday. We got goodies each of the first few days. Yesterday we received little blue papers with handwritten notes from students. For me, the last was interesting because I received a number from some of my more problematic students in my last period, those to whom I have to be somewhat firm about behavior and other things - it is almost as if they are thanking me because I draw and enforce boundaries, which is something that perhaps they do not get from other adults.
As I sit in my Starbucks, breakfast was paid for by a 'thanks, teacher!" Starbucks card. Each of us receive such a card with $10 on it. With well over $100, that does show some appreciation.
That this week comes at the beginning of May is timely. Advanced Placement exams have begun, our seniors leave our classes soon, our other students are winding down. This can be a difficult and draining time, and it is nice that as a community we take taime to acknowledge and thank those who most make it work, the classroom teachers.
But I think I want to suggest some different ways of showing appreciation for teachers. Thus I ask you to keep reading.
If you are a student, try to do the work, take some risks, try to get even from teachers with whom you do not connect all that well whatever you can.
If you are a parent, a simple note of thanks can mean a great deal. Or if you see the teachers, to thank them to their faces. I was fortunate to experience that at the luncheon from parents of several of my current kids.
If you are an administrator, find an occasion to acknowledge, publicly or privately, something good a teacher has done. It is a recognition that too often our teachers do not get. My first principal, the notably intense Dr. Marion White-Hood, was quite good at this, finding occasions throughout the year to drop a note in a teacher's box thanking her for something perhaps ordinary, but serving as a reminder that Doc as we call her understand the importance of even the ordinary things we do.,
If you are community member with no kids in school, you are still involved, because the taxes on your home or your business go towards funding our public schools. Insist on quality, tell the school board, the council members, the state legislators to support the work of teachers, to honor them with more than occasionally proclamations by providing the resources they need to do their jobs.
If you are any of those public officials, show that you appreciate teachers by working for policies that help us serve our students. Stop targeting and demeaning and belittling us.
If you are journalists who write about education and schools, tell the complete story. Maybe our test scores are low, but now our students are showing up because teachers care about them. Understand that test scores correlate with poverty and nutrition and many other things, and that sometimes students don't show up because they haven't eaten, or they have no place to wash the only clothes they have and do not want to come to school stinking.
Everyone remember, whatever we do in our schools will not be successful without teachers. Remember that most of us teach because we care deeply about the students in our care. Give us what we need to meet the needs of students as the unique individuals they are.
This week was nice. It is nice to be recognized, to be told in different ways that what we do matterrs.
Tell us more than just during this week.
Tell us by your actions and your words and your respect.
As teachers, we are even when we are frustrated in trying to help our students, very much aware of what Henry Adams wrote about: "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." We don't know, and yet we keep trying.
Heklp us in making that influence something positive in the lives of our students.
That is the appreciation we really need.
Thanks.