Appreciating our teachers ahead of their official week
When I heard that Teacher Appreciation Week was coming up, from May 6 to 10, I immediately had a vision of Miss Lois Birch.
But before I sing the praises of my sixth-grade teacher, and a couple of others, a word about this annual week for teachers. Not all teachers like it, and with good reason.
Feeling unappreciated may be the greatest plague of the workplace, whether it’s a classroom or a newsroom or a factory floor. Everyone wants to be sufficiently honored, which includes, but isn’t limited to, being sufficiently paid. Few people, as best I can tell, feel they are.
Like many other workers, many teachers have legitimate cause to feel that way, and properly appreciating them isn’t something that can be done in a week with candy bars, doughnuts and thank-you cards.
The proper way to appreciate teachers is to respect them week after week, and the way to do that is to pay them well, equip their schools decently and acknowledge that the work they do is essential to the social bedrock.
Still, it doesn’t hurt to have a week that reminds us to pause and think about how teachers help us. When we recall the ones who have, we reinforce the understanding that teachers deserve more than a week of candy and cards.
In that spirit, here are a few of the teachers whose lessons I carry inside me. I hope they’ll nudge you to think of yours.
Miss Birch.
I can still see her standing at the chalkboard in my sixth-grade classroom at Alexander IV Elementary School in Macon, Ga., her long white hair piled into a messy bun, her simple white cotton dress belted at the waist, summoning me forward to diagram a sentence.
More than any other teacher, she taught me to see and love the structure of sentences. She made us read out loud, which taught me to hear written language. Thanks to her, I never confuse “lie” and “lay.”
And Mrs. Jean O’Neal.
She was my seventh-grade teacher, younger and less strict than Miss Birch, with pert bouffant hair. She seemed to have fun teaching, and her fun was contagious. Unlike the nuns of my early school days, who held discipline as the highest art, she believed in creativity. She made it OK to laugh and talk in class.
She often assigned one-page handwritten essays on important topics like “If I had 24 Hours to Live.” It was on that essay, I think, that she wrote a sentence that seared itself into my brain as a revelation: “You could be a writer.”
From her, I learned the power of a teacher’s encouragement.
And Sister Mary Louise Barhorst. She was a teacher and college counselor at Gerard High School in Phoenix. (I wrote about her once before.) She convinced me to apply to Pomona College in California. My parents, who were in dire financial straits, knew nothing about colleges or applications. And given that they were preparing to move our family into a motel room during my senior year, my college quest was not high on their agenda.
When Pomona’s acceptance letter came, I glanced at the cost and knew I couldn’t afford to go. I tucked the letter in a drawer, telling no one.
A while later, Sister Barhorst asked if I’d heard back from Pomona. I said I had but couldn’t afford it. She asked if I still had the letter. I said I did. She said, “Bring it to me.” When she saw it, she realized what I hadn’t understood — that I’d been offered a nearly full ride. She called the college and made sure the offer was still good.
From her, I learned the radical role a teacher can play for students who have no other guidance.
When I got to college I met teachers who taught me in new ways, who pushed me harder than I’d been pushed before. From them I learned that being pushed is good, as long as it’s done with caring and respect.
Not every student gets the benefit of good teachers, and not every good teacher has the ease of working with good students. The teachers I admire most are the ones who extend themselves to help students for whom learning is hard.
Good teachers teach us about many things, not all of them on the lesson plan. The beauty and rigor of language. Creativity and encouragement. Radical support.
Teachers have given me all these, and I know I’m not alone.
Good teachers teach us about many things, not all of them on the lesson plan. The beauty and rigor of language. Creativity and encouragement. Radical support.