Appreciate all teachers, not just favorites
May is the month for teacher appreciation, with National Teacher’s Day on May 2, and Teacher Appreciation Week celebrated from May 8-12 this year.
Words cannot adequately capture the debt that I owe so many of the teachers who instructed me during my grade school years. The care, knowledge, time and effort that they invested in me has contributed greatly to my successes.
I hope everyone will take the time to share appreciation for teachers everywhere and reflect appreciatively on those teachers from their own school years.
When I hear many people share their teacher appreciation stories, I often hear about the “special” teachers who gave so much of themselves to the person telling the story. Of course, many students over many years tell similar stories about that same teacher, which testifies to the tremendous influence of all those “special” teachers in schools around the world and their impact on so many students.
I think it’s likely that almost every teacher has been the “special” teacher for a number of students. The “special” teacher is easy to appreciate.
If teachers were just responsible for teaching the students that had a strong connection to the class or the instructor, they could still count themselves proud of the positive impact they have on students’ lives and the future of their communities. We all know that the job of a teacher is much more difficult.
Teachers instruct students who only want to do enough to pass, students who prefer to sleep, students who would rather be anywhere else, and a variety of other students who may not have been hanging on every word in class.
I hope that everyone will reflect appreciatively on ALL of their teachers, regardless of whether the teacher was one of the “favorites.” We must also appreciate the teachers that we didn’t look forward to seeing each day in our youth: the teachers who were hardest on us, the teachers who taught our least favorite subjects, and the teachers who demanded that we keep working despite the lack of interest or motivation are the teachers that were likely working hardest for us.
One of the best ways to identify the people who care most about us is finding those who let us know that we can and should do better. Often, that’s one of our teachers.
The “other” teachers taught us the things we weren’t interested in learning at the time and we found out later that the learning in that class was the foundation for other more interesting content. It’s also likely that some of those teachers taught us that we could achieve in areas we didn’t think we would.
In the end, we learned important content from all of our teachers through the years whether we remember liking the class at the time or not.
Let’s be sure to give our special teachers, and perhaps more importantly, our “other” teachers the appreciation they deserve for their dedication to all students every day.