Thank Goodness for Teachers!

The school year is starting. Some of us welcome the “back to school” sales, while others see them as the death knell of summer’s freedom. And even though they are not paid during the summer, schoolteachers have spent an unfair and disproportionate part of it getting ready to receive our children. 

Professors, teachers, and especially public school faculty have become political punching bags recently. Not only is it disgusting and unfair, but it is also sharper than a serpent’s tooth! Public schoolteachers are the masons of success and, as we continue to learn from the pandemic, the foundation of our economy. When the schools stopped, the great machinery of business and industry stalled and sputtered. 

So let us give thanks for those wonderful souls who teach our children. Let us give thanks to those who have earned enough education to join the upwardly mobile and the moneyed upper middle classes, but eschew just earning a living and instead choose a vocation of giving. 

Let’s face it; those who teach could have been bankers, lawyers, doctors, scientists, artists, and all manner of professionals. Instead, they chose service to the children and our communities. They deserve our gratitude – and support! 

Get off their backs! If you don’t like the book, read your child another one. If you don’t like the ideas, discuss your beliefs with your children. While what happens in school certainly shapes children, it pales compared to what happens at home. If what you, as parents, are teaching your children can be so easily washed away by school lessons or activities, that speaks to what is going on at home far more than what is happening in the classroom. 

Consider this: teachers receive and welcome your children, even on the days when things have not gone well, even on the days when your kids were upset with you or you with them, even when you thought that maybe this whole parenting thing was a big mistake, even on the days when your children wondered if you still loved them. To whom did they turn? Their teachers. And their teachers reassured and supported them. You’re welcome. 

I have been concerned about using the term love here because it has been dirtied and maligned by those who cheat on their spouses, swindle their customers, lie to their constituents, and then tell you that you can’t trust teachers. It has been sexualized by those who pay hush money to sex workers and similarly would silence teachers who want to help our children make this a safer and saner society –for our kids and all of us. 

Because, like good parents, teachers love our children. They sacrifice for our children. They are not perfect. Like parents, they range from stellar to so-so. Like politicians, they make mistakes, even in service of larger goals. Yet, like good shepherds, they lead our children to find nourishment, comfort, community, and enlightenment. 

Stop beating up teachers and start extolling and exalting them. They hold our country together. They love our children even when we falter. 

And frankly, some of your children have questions they are afraid to ask you. Some of your children are curious about the books you have stolen from the library and destroyed. They want to talk to you about the concepts you want teachers to hide from them. Banning these ideas from the classroom will not prevent this exploration. It will not stop kids from thinking. It will change their view of their parents.  

Do you want your children to realize that, sometimes, their teachers have their best interests at heart even when their parents are silent and afraid? Thank goodness their teachers are there even when their parents want to shut down the conversation. In the age of the internet, banning books and forbidding discussion will never stop the ideas. Teachers know this. Some folks fear this. There is no stopping it. 

Teachers are the support structure and safety net of our society. As we send our children back to the classrooms, let us be grateful.