Today, May 4th, is Teacher Appreciation Day. This entire week, May 3rd through May 7th, is also set aside for teacher recognition. (According to the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), the appreciation week actually begins on May 2nd.)
No matter how upset we might get when teachers make mistakes (and many do make mistakes), it would be difficult to deny the importance of what they do. Working with children and youth is one of the most challenging and, at the same time, one of the most critical jobs that anyone could ever hold.
Do you want to make a real difference in our world? Change the life of a young person and you will change the world.
It’s very easy to take what teachers do for granted. Each day many of us who have children in the U.S. (or in Europe, or in many other countries) drop our kids off to be educated and at the end of the day, we pick them up. But, what happens in between the time we drop our child off and the time that we pick them up determines their future in a very real way.
While not every single teacher is wonderful or even committed, there are enough truly great teachers out there to prompt this post from me.
For example, I’m very grateful to those teachers who took the extra time with me to make sure that my school work was both challenging and inspiring. I easily could have gotten bored with school, but instead I have memories of teachers who went the extra mile and made many of my lessons interesting. Over the years, what I’ve found is that there’s no substitution for a good education.
In addition to teaching the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and science–here are just a few of the other issues that many teachers deal with and solve on a daily basis:
- Behavioral problems in the classroom
- Students with learning differences
- Students with health problems
- Students who may have problems at home
- Language differences between students
Of course, these problems are just a part of what teachers face. Many students have even more serious issues, and when they do it is often a teacher who notices the problem first.
The truth is that you can have the best learning facility in the world, but without a good teacher, such a wonderful facility is relatively useless–it’s just another empty building.
So, today I choose to recognize and thank all of the good, hard-working teachers out there.
Are you looking for a way to really make a difference? Consider becoming a teacher.
Has a teacher made a real difference in your life? Why not share the story and leave a thank-you in the comments?