Opinion: Teachers Need Our Kindness More than Ever

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

“Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.’ –Jacques Barzun

Growing up, the waning days of Summer meant one thing: time to go back to school.

It was an unofficial holiday season, complete with shopping. I liked school, and even though it meant returning to often brutally hot classrooms (I never attended a school with air conditioning), it also signaled a new beginning, a new year.

The smell of a fresh Blue Horse notebook, a freshly sharpened pencil mixed with the dust of blackboard chalk was intoxicating.

Most of my teachers seemed equally pleased to be back on their stage for another year, grateful for the challenge of shaping ideas and sometimes changing the lives.  

Even in those days, when there was strong parental support in small neighborhood schools, preparing to teach a room full of kids could be a bit like trying to fill a bucket with holes in it.  

Some kids picked things up quickly, while others did not. But in the days before standardized tests, teachers had more time and authority to figure out what each class needed and work toward meeting those needs. Teachers were trusted.

The decades that followed brought more administrative tasks and pressure to prepare students for state/national testing, the scores of which often were used to evaluate the profession. 

So the workload and hours increased alongside students who are increasingly unprepared for classroom.  

And as teacher authority slowly eroded, disruptive student behavior and violence increased. 

Little surprise that one study found that between 40-50 percent of teachers burnout within the first five years in the classroom.

Salaries have improved, some, but still lag far behind other professional positions with similar hours and benefits. 

Now a new set of challenges has been added to the plate of all educational professionals this year.  

Finding relatively safe ways to return to students safely to the classroom during the COVIC-19 pandemic is both difficult and politically charged. 

Schools in some states, such as Georgia have quickly discovered that sending students back to classrooms without requiring masks or appropriate distancing, is not going well, with many schools closing or being forced to make sweeping changes within the first few days of reopening.

Schools in Anderson County school districts are taking a variety of approaches which hope to keep students, teachers and staff as safe as possible this school year.

But keep in mind none of the decisions made here or elsewhere in the country on if/how/when it’s safe to return to any form of in-person classroom were made by teachers. Some were made through cooperative efforts of superintendents and school boards. Others were dictated by school boards without adequate information.  

So teachers are being asked to add to their already long hours of work the added responsibility of doing these things while hopefully slowing the spread of the virus.  

Some will teach remotely, and those I have talked to who are taking this route will miss the students and interaction of the classroom. 

Many of those going back into traditional in-person classroom are terrified by the prospect of being the teacher they want to be while avoiding contracting the virus and taking it home to family and friends (many of whom are in the high-risk category for the virus.) 

Not a single teacher knew when they chose the profession that one day they would be labeled essential front-line workers in a pandemic. 

Facing the prospect of nervous parents, students and the community adds another layer of worry and concern. 

As a community we can all make the best of a difficult situation. 

As students begin returning to school this year, please dig deep for extra measures of compassion, patience and grace for our teachers. 

In the best of times, most teachers don’t see a lot of  expressions of kindness for what they do. 

Like it or not, we are all in this together. How we weather this storm will both reveal our character and either build or tear down the education process which is likely to be forever changed by the pandemic. 

Now would be a good time to start a new back-to-school tradition. Send thank you notes (include gift cards if you can) to let teachers know you appreciate their efforts - especially now (If you don’t have kids in schools, surely you know a teacher that could use such encouragement). 

Such expressions might ease (at least a little) their unprecedented uphill challenge of the new school. 

It never hurts to try a little kindness.