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It’s been 417 days since many of our students, your children, our kids, set foot on our schools’ campuses. For educators, those 9,984 hours seem like an eternity. An eternity where our babies have grown up amid a global pandemic and we have missed witnessing their milestones. The kindergarteners we last saw are now about to enter second grade, and many of our graduating classes have missed two years of class trips and expected celebrations.
Around the world, education has spun into a new direction, and our teachers are active participants in that transformation. Right now, there are teachers doing all sorts of peculiar things. Some are walking down a hall separating each student by a meter. Some are creating breakout rooms for their instructional delivery, changing their virtual backgrounds, perhaps mailing instructional materials to their students, researching virtual content, or having computer generated conferences to help their students gain greater understanding of difficult concepts.
Our educators are on a new frontier where the opportunities to sculpt and be malleable are beyond our wildest dreams. They are authoring the changes we will read about in our history books. When systems crashed, they adapted and overcame, and now they even plan for those inevitable technical glitches. They bring their classrooms alive for students in virtual settings by creating innovative ways to engage students while keeping them safe, and we should applaud them for all their efforts and hard work. Without education and the tools of critical thinking, we are easily manipulated, less prepared for complex and changing jobs, and easy targets for false narratives.
During this intense year of teaching during a pandemic, our teachers have done all that and more. They are stressed out and exhausted as they have tried to reach every single child whether in person, virtual, or under quarantine. Now, our community has had a glimpse into their noble work and respect them more for it.
On this Teacher Appreciation Week, let’s celebrate them generously. They helped our children gain a sense of normalcy while learning fundamental concepts and opened the doors to the restarting of our communities. This year we learned that our educators are the heartbeat of our neighborhoods. We owe them a lot every day, so let’s celebrate them like the stars that they are. Our teachers deserve all the praise, honor, and respect for their generosity to our babies and selfless sacrifices.
To all our stellar teachers, thank you for thriving, breaking barriers, inspiring, and being trailblazers. All of you deserve a special recognition for your work, especially during such a trying year. You have achieved never before heights in unfathomable situations. You are making history, as the future of education is now, and I hope that our community showers you with appreciation every day and not just on Teacher Appreciation Day. Our teachers are awesome!
