Teacher’s wear many hats every day: leader, group participant, and student organizer as well as volunteer coordinator and para educator guide. They communicate daily with students, parents, staff members and fellow teachers. They grade papers, help students become independent thinkers, chair committees, and take home whatever they can’t finish during the school day. Even a 24-hour day isn’t enough time!
As a retired teacher I remember the weekly demands as well: working on student groupings, planning and organizing the curriculum and appropriate materials, attending staff and parent club meetings. Each task could be a full-time job.
Quarterly they add student conferences, reporting to parents and each spring add-on local and state testing, yet somehow the faithful remain dedicated to staying and working in classrooms.
Lately the new testing, new technology, new personal assessment requirements, and new rules and regulations put added pressure on all teachers from preschool through high school. It’s an ever-growing, unending list of expectations heaped on them, and they remain in schools for kids, because they care.
Teaching is an ever-changing profession where individuals, teams, schools, districts and states look for the best way to help all students achieve. Most educators spend their school year breaks in classes or working on an advanced degree or national certification so they can be even better at what they do.
That’s why we need to appreciate our teachers not once a week every year, but every day of every year.
Please take the time to thank every teacher you know and/or meet. If not for their dedication, you’d not be reading this, finding the perfect occupation for yourself or developing any of a multitude of other skills to better your life and those around you.