Teacher Appreciation Week arrives each May with good intentions, and the appreciation is genuine. However, we sometimes choose words that don’t capture the essence of what impactful teachers do for children.
In appreciation, we call teachers dedicated, influential, transformative. They are certainly all of those things. What we talk about less is the deliberate craft and underlying attributes that make a great teacher great.
Shaping lives and demonstrating empathy and concern can have a powerful, life-affirming effect on young people. I was moved recently by the memoir of John King, former secretary of education and current chancellor of the State University of New York, titled “Teacher By Teacher: The People Who Change Our Lives.” It is a powerful tribute to the teachers who, as he writes, saved his life as he lived through family tragedy, and helped to steer him on a path of academic success and commitment to service to the educational community.
More than empathy, they challenged him to be the best version of himself. All of us remember teachers who made a difference in our lives. We need to celebrate them in appreciation.
Teachers make a difference. They learn when and how to adjust and meet students’ needs.
Heidi Stagner teaches art at Eugene Field Elementary in Maryville, Mo. When her fourth graders were struggling with fractions, rather than pressing ahead with worksheets, Heidi brought them into the art room and had them paint pizzas, dividing them into fractional slices.
Fractions went from being abstract to something you could see, hold and, best of all, argue about. As well as sharpening her students’ artistic technique, Heidi’s pedagogical method helped her find a way in and made a concept suddenly make sense to a particular child in a particular moment.
That is a skill. It is also a cultivated mindset. Help each child learn so they see their capabilities and learn that they can be successful. Good teachers learn from their students and know how to reach them. When it works, it looks effortless.
Matthew Rinehart teaches mathematics at Northern Middle School in Hagerstown, Md. He uses small-group instruction and visual tools to make math feel comfortingly logical, working closely enough with students to catch a misconception before it hardens into a belief that they’re simply “not a math person.”
It’s precisely this attentiveness from educators that can change a student’s trajectory. Helping students see themselves as learners is critical to their embracing math and preparing for a lifetime of learning.
Everbell Boampong is a principal and educator at P.S. 287K in Brooklyn. When she arrived, the school was the lowest performing in its local district. Today, students are piloting drones, writing code, performing on stage and running an agribusiness program that addresses food insecurity.
Each of those projects began with a teacher helping a student identify a real problem, ask the right questions, and work toward a meaningful response. Teachers in the school believe that fostering student agency will enable them to excel. Boampong has built a school where that kind of teaching has become the expectation.
What these educators share is a refusal to treat teaching as the mere delivery of content. They are dedicated to building thinkers and doers: young people who can weigh evidence, sit with complexity and turn knowledge into action. In an era when students are bombarded with information, it is essential that they know how to think and have faith in their ability to think and act independently.
All these teachers are helping put their students on the path that Chancellor King was on. It is why, during Teacher Appreciation Week, I encourage all of us to go beyond gratitude and ask a firmer question: are we giving teachers the trust, the resources, and the professional respect that this kind of teaching truly requires?
Recognizing great teaching means more than celebrating it. It means creating conditions for educators to thrive.
David Weiss is the head of U.S. IB World Schools for the International Baccalaureate. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
