The times show how impressive teachers are
Teacher appreciation week is May 4-8 this year. Let’s appreciate them even more in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Districts are handling the crisis variously, but teachers are involved in media like Google Classroom, DPS-TV, DPSOnlinelearning, etc.
In fact, some of these have the advantage of allowing parents to see the teachers teaching and form an impression of them, albeit in an artificially benign environment.
But a couple things happened even before the current crisis that started me thinking about teachers again. I ran into one of my kids’ favorite school teachers in the grocery store, and she remembered the kids, and me. Now there’s an impression.
Impression is a great attribute for teachers.
Then a fellow member of my historical society, a retired teacher, saw an old high school picture of his favorite teacher on a display wall and mentioned that she was the one who got him interested in teaching. Definitely impressed him.
We can’t overestimate the effect a great teacher has on us. We all have those favorite teachers who became our reason for liking school; those who impressed us so firmly that they affected our future ... sometimes our very careers. I remember vividly a crusty old physics and chemistry teacher, Mr. B, with a heart of gold (atomic number 79) who got me interested in physics and guided me to scholarships and to university as a physics major (a novel thing for my “acrossthe-tracks” family).
Then there was the math teacher, Mr. S, who used his free period to introduce some of us to calculus, not taught in most high schools in the 1950s. And the English teacher, Mrs. W, who encouraged my writing and brutally critiqued early attempts.
My school-psychologist wife tells me that teaching is much more difficult now. Lots of reasons, like mandates, mainstreaming, liability, rules, statistics, testing, reporting paperwork, etc. Maybe by adding these things, however well-intentioned and however successful or not, we lost something. There’s
We can’t overestimate the effect a great teacher has on us.
definitely less time available now for one-on-one encouragement and mentoring.
So we can definitely appreciate all teachers as a group. They have lots to contend with from above and below. But even so, there are some teachers who still are able to so impress the kids that they will be remembered long after graduation. They will be the ones that, sometimes even unknowingly, steer a kid into a meaningful and satisfying career — and who make school attendance tolerable for some.
Unfortunately, their special ability doesn’t show up in evaluations. I think the kids, all the other teachers and all levels of staff know who these teachers are; it’s too bad the evaluation systems don’t include asking the kids or peers or staff. The system doesn’t allow their proper recognition and deserved reward. It’s not that these teachers are “easy” — in fact I recall B, S, and W above as strict and challenging. But there was something about them that drew out the best in us. That made us want to make them proud.
There must be something special about them, because I still can visualize them several decades later. And I still thank them.