Bloom

The first week of May (May 2-8) is National Teacher Appreciation Week. Next to being a parent, teaching is the hardest job a person will ever love.

Teachers spend long hours grading papers, preparing lessons and setting up their classrooms so their students can have the best learning environment and educational experience possible. This is time spent away from their families. They spend their own money on supplies because school budgets, cut to the bone, cannot afford to pay for the “extras” that make learning fun, both for the student and the teacher. In most, if not all, cases they are not reimbursed for these purchases.

Not everyone can be a teacher. It takes five years of education, in most places, to start as a first-year teacher and then the teacher faces the looming prospect of years of college-loan repayment.

Teachers are fearless. It takes a certain caliber of person to not be overcome by the thundering silence that follows a question asked of a room full of seventh-graders, who look as though they have just heard an ancient language for the first time.

Teachers cannot be afraid of blood, either, or other bodily fluids; scraped knees are par for the course. They cannot be daunted when someone small stands in front of them and announces they feel sick, and then proceeds to prove it on the teacher’s shoe.

Dedication, teacher it is your middle name. How many teachers have spent weekends, and late nights preparing their classrooms for the fall classes (raise your hands, now)? It is a myth, too, that teachers get three months of “vacation” in the summer. Summers are spent taking classes to maintain their certification and credentials. Again, this is at their own expense.

Teachers do more than teach. They help students learn to tie their shoes, put on mittens, remember homework (and, no, the dog can’t eat it all the time), learn to read, write, understand math and learn to get along with others. And the list goes on and on.

A teacher must have a sense of humor. One teacher told his first-graders, on the first day of class, that they needed to get in a line. This request was met with dead silence. The first-graders all looked at each other. One of them had the courage to raise his little hand and ask the teacher, “What’s a line?” Well, we all have to start someplace.

A teacher, in the absence of a parent, is also the comforter of life’s heartbreaks and heartaches, from the first time they don’t get picked for a team to the last broken heart when they don’t get invited to the dance. They are the tender of skinned knees and other assorted “boo-boos” that go with growing up. And, no, it isn’t just a part of “the job.” Teaching is not a job, it is a calling, a passion. If you are a teacher you know this and understand it. If you are a teacher and someone asks you, “Why are you a teacher?” Do you find yourself thinking, “Well, I could try to tell you, but you probably wouldn’t understand.”

We are so very fortunate that we have not had to endure the heartbreak of a tragedy such as Columbine, Sandy Hook or Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School. Places where teachers paid the ultimate price protecting their students. Again, fearlessly and without thought to their own safety, they kept their students safe and out of harm’s way.

If your child can read and write, play well with others, does not run with scissors and doesn’t need all the toys in the toy box, you probably have a teacher to thank.

According to a recent National Public Radio report, stress is the No. 1 reason, even ahead of pay (which isn’t the No. 1 reason one goes into teaching in the first place), why teachers leave their profession. This was true even before the pandemic. Between teaching in person (when they can) and teaching virtually, some teachers are working 10-hour days, six days a week. Again, this is time they are away from their families.

Though there should be an appreciation week, and maybe someday there will be, for administrative staff, principals, custodial, para-professionals and cafeteria staff, and all the others who keep a school running, and they are greatly appreciated for their contributions, until such time as they have their own “week of appreciation,” we will have to acknowledge them as a group, and thank them for their hard work. And, yes, there should be a parents’ appreciation week, too. That goes without saying, of course.

I have had the pleasure and privilege of working with the finest teachers imaginable. I have learned from them, laughed with them and, yes, even cried with them. Wallowa County is a very lucky place, to have so many teachers of such a high caliber, who go above and beyond for their students every day. They love their jobs.

On a personal note, my best friend of more than 50 years is a teacher. At the start of the pandemic she was working 10-hour days, six days a week. That is dedication. She wasn’t doing it for any recognition or accolades, she was doing it for her students. I sent flowers. Thank you, Helen, for all you do.

I have also been on the receiving end of education by some excellent teachers. I have one in particular, who taught me how to be a critical thinker, how important the First Amendment is, that a sentence is more than a capital letter and a period and that on time is late. Thank you, Dr. Tom Heuterman, for everything.

So, the next time you are out in the community and you see a teacher, thank him or her. They need to hear those words, they need to hear them often, and they need to hear them from us.