Teacher Appreciation Week

For those of you who have neither family members in school or family members who are teachers, just wanted to let you know that it is teacher appreciation week.

Though there was some confusion both on my social media and at my school about when teacher appreciation week was - not helped by the restaurants offering free teacher meals from a select menu of items (no steaks for you!), we finally are in agreement that this week, May 7 - 13, is teacher appreciation week.

And if there was any doubt, there was a proclamation from the White House.

My school is celebrating us by starting state testing.

Only half kidding, we start today. But besides that, there are breakfasts and lunches planned, as well as free tickets to a baseball game, if we wanted to go.

In my eight years of teaching, I've had a complicated relationship with this week. In my first year, I was amazed at how thoughtful the gifts that we received were. As a homeschooler, my teacher was my mother, and she was always celebrated. So being a teacher and receiving gifts was a fun part of an otherwise stressful first year.

I've always worked in Title I schools - schools where the families are either below or very close to the poverty line. So I never expected extravagant gifts from my students or their families. I didn't expect gifts at all, to be honest, so it was a sweet surprise during the week.

My principals always made sure to support us as well, offering meals, extended lunch breaks, and on one occasion, a professional massage given in the computer lab.

If there is one thing that I can say about the babies that I've taught over the years, it's that they were some of the sweetest children. The amount of handmade cards, art projects, and fun-sized pieces of candy I've received is really a testament to that. Even the students who would arrive at school, puzzled as to why everyone was giving me gifts, would quickly rummage around and find something for me the next day upon being told that it was teacher appreciation.

Don't get me wrong, you'll always have at least one student who wonders aloud why teachers need to be appreciated, but I feel like that's just part of the job.

The sales and discounts that come along with being a teacher this week aren't that bad either; several years running I would stand in long lines to get the free bowl from Chipotle to serve as dinner and the next day's lunch - until my body decided that we can't handle Chipotle anymore. (Sorry, Chipotle; we had a good run.)

Of course, this week had to be approached differently once COVID hit. One day we were going about our normal teaching lives, and the next we were off for two weeks. After training created by people who had also never taught during a global pandemic, we were thrown into teaching virtually.

It seemed that teacher appreciation was every day. Parents overwhelmed by their children always being at home lamented how hard it was to keep their students focused and on task; the public at large was amazed at our dedication to our students and finishing out the school year despite the world being shut down.

There were, of course, the detractors, who felt that we were just milking the pandemic to get out of doing work and that we should have been able to go back into the buildings.

I'm not here to discuss whether or not shutting down schools or keeping us virtual was a wise decision or not; I can only say, as someone who was among the many who pivoted to new systems, programs, and curriculums on a dime, that we most certainly were not just chilling at home.

The families that I worked with during the pandemic knew and appreciated the work that teachers were doing. Even though the grand celebrations couldn't happen, we still got cards and homemade certificates, as well as signs outside of the school to show appreciation.

Now that we're back in the buildings, teacher appreciation week is somewhat back to normal. Not surprisingly, the praise for teachers that abounded during the pandemic is long gone, replaced by increasing demands to catch students up to grade level after distance learning while also teaching them the social skills missed from those years - not to mention being blamed when students turn to violence over cell phones and consequences for their actions or calls for teachers to lay down their lives for students.

The job of a teacher is an exhausting one, and I don't think that people outside of the classroom can truly appreciate it. Teachers literally make thousands of decisions on a daily basis, we worry about our students when they're not there, we work hard to create experiences and catch their interest, and help them to learn to the best of our ability. We're required to complete professional development throughout the year - including the summer! - to grow in our teaching practices. This isn't even considering the additional pressure on the teachers who have spouses and children of their own to care for when they get home.

So the next time that you see a teacher, thank them. It's the least that you can do for the people who are working hard to shape the future of our country.