Teachers, your task is difficult. It may, in fact, be impossible. You walk into a classroom every day, expected to equip, challenge, and inspire every student, regardless of background, home support, past educational experience, or interest level in your subject. You may or may not have the support of your administration when it comes to classroom disruptions. You likely don’t have the budget you need to properly carry out the things you would like to do, so you employ your creative skills to work around lack of supplies. As with all of the other issues in our society, education has become polarized along political lines, and you are in the middle, just trying to do your job.
And you do it. You do it well. You do it because you know kids need you to do it.
Every day, you equip your students with the information they need to be good decision-makers. This
is no small task, especially in an ever changing technological, political, and social landscape.
You fight the people who say they never use algebra because you know that they use the thought
processes of algebra daily. You overcome the fact that someone's mom didn't like the Scarlet Letter
or thinks teaching poetry is dumb because you know that the analytical skills that accompany analysis
of complex texts are important for the developing mind. You insist on the proper ending to chemical
formulas because getting it right can literally be the difference between life and death. You make them
memorize even though it isn't fun because you know the act of memorizing strengthens their brains,
no matter what some TikTok influencer says. The mere act of equipping them is Herculean, and
it is the most basic level of your job.
American teachers, you are also meant to challenge students at all levels of the ability spectrum (I
understand this might be different in other places). In the same classroom, you have a child with
profound learning disabilities and those with intelligence higher than your own and the full spectrum
of academic levels in between. You have students who may have had a bad experience with science
or math in the past and enter your classroom skittish while others suggest lab experiments to you
because they spend their free time reading about them online. You know differentiation isn't really
possible, but you try. You ask ALL of them to perform better than they believe they are able to at things
they don’t think they are good at. You are supposed to be fun and joyful and engaging while you
demand more from a child than the child (and sometimes their parents) think you should be asking for
because you know meeting challenges is good for the soul.
The best of you inspire, asking your students to look beyond the grade, the curriculum, and the tests to
see what they can do with their education. You have a student who “doesn’t like art” on the first day
they enter your classroom who will tell stories someday about the teacher who made them care about
the what the Dada movement was trying to accomplish or have an emotional reaction in a museum.
Some may go into medicine because you taught them anatomy, but most will simply be enriched by
having a better understanding of their own body. You build up students into people with a broader
view of the world than they would have if you hadn’t been their teacher.
And that is just the academic part of your job; I have not included all of the social counseling, emotional
baggage, and safety concerns you keep in balance. You know which students shouldn’t be put in a group
together and who needs a friend to sit with at lunch. You are the frontline of reporting abuse and the
shoulder to cry on for many students and colleagues. You make hundreds of decisions per day, often
without time to reflect on them thoroughly.
Now, you know why you are so tired on Friday afternoons.
This teacher appreciation week, I hope you got some of the love an gratitude you deserve.
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