05/08/2021
Is it still Teacher Appreciation Week? If it’s not, let’s just go ahead and make it Teacher Appreciation Month, okay? Hell, let’s give them this whole damned year. Heaven knows they’ve earned it.
Remember how, when the pandemic started and our kids began remote schooling, we all hailed teachers as heroes? Spoiler alert: They still are.
I always thought I knew how hard educators worked. I grew up with a dad who was a middle school principal and a mom who was a high school guidance counselor, after all. To this day, I still have not met a more ardent nor more vociferous advocate for teachers (and students) than my dad. Appreciating them was pretty much in my DNA.
But this past year has given me an entirely different perspective. Like a journalist embedded with troops, I’ve seen first hand what it’s like to do the job. (And given the year we’ve just lived through, I think the wartime metaphor is pretty apt.)
I’ve watched them overcome Herculean odds to reach and engage kids. I’ve watched them pivot from one platform to another and back again, then manage a hybrid of the two, all the while frantically searching for ways to make it all work. I’ve seen them fight through failing technology to draw kids in, to make them feel connected, even when their Wifi wasn’t.
As my daughter’s de facto home aide throughout the pandemic, I’ve seen the amount of work that it takes to support kids with complex needs, to make inclusion possible, to pull together every possible resource to reach students where they are. And I’ve seen it happen while tending, not just to their academic needs, but to their social / emotional health and well-being, at a time when many are dealing with unimaginable horrors in their own lives.
I’ve seen my daughter’s teachers create the room to talk about really, really big, necessary things. About fear and impotence and rage. About depression and anxiety and burdens far too big for their young shoulders to bear. I’ve seen them connect these kids not just to adults but to each other, creating networks of understanding and support that many didn’t realize they so desperately needed.
I’ve seen them celebrate the smallest victories and the tiniest successes. I’ve seen them commiserate and empathize and encourage … and model humanity in myriad ways that showed kids that allowing space for vulnerability and honesty is the only way we move forward.
And then, after Brooke and I closed the laptop and shut down Zoom at the end of her day, I watched my husband, a high school English teacher, start the second half of his. I watched him struggle with how to help the kids who he knew needed just a little bit more. I watched him tackle overwhelming subjects, determined to help his kids to wrangle with the messiness of the age, to determine what matters, to find their voices.
I watched him write recommendation after recommendation as if each were for his own child. I watched him revise and reword and rework, determined to ensure that whomever would receive it would see that student the way that he had, and would be just as hungry to help them reach their potential as he was. I watched him agonize over who was most deserving of an award, and fight for one more nomination for a kid he refused to exclude.
Time and again, I waved to him as we left the house on a weekend for a walk and he stayed behind to catch up on work because there simply wasn’t ever enough time during the week to stay ahead of it all. And I knew that what I was watching was happening in every home of every teacher that I’d see on Zoom the following Monday.
Yeah, remember how, when the pandemic started and our kids began remote schooling, we all hailed teachers as heroes? Spoiler alert: They still are. More so now than ever.
{image is a photo of Luau teaching via Zoom on Halloween of last year, dressed as Oscar the Grouch}
