Like every teacher, I stand on the shoulders of my own teachers. I think upon them often, not just during Teacher Appreciation Week. In fact, midyear, end of year, start of year — all seem like appropriate times to become reacquainted with these stirring words. And my thoughts extend beyond my own immediate school colleagues to the corps of men and women everywhere doing important and much-needed work with our society’s children.
I’ll share my all-time favorite charge to the faculty, written for the start of a new school year but appropriate every day of the school year. I always find new energy from it. Perhaps it will have the same effect on you, whether you are a teacher, a student or a parent of a student. We are all at least two of these three.
It’s written by Jonathan Slater, a school head whom I worked with a while back, and his remarks to the faculty at the start of school.
“It is my annual duty to remind you,” he said to us, “of the noble impulses that caused you to become teachers in the first place, and I do it with relish, not that you seem to need much reminding. I like to think that the best schools are places where hearts and minds come together — and that is certainly the case in this school — for you make it so. In part, my job is to watch you do it, to watch you make that special magic, different in each of you, that you make afresh every year. It is something to see.
“It is your responsibility to inspire your students and you will, you always do, for you are inspired. I submit that you are inspired by that foolish, brave old dream of a better world, even as you are haunted by that dark fear of a worse one, so there are moral imperatives in your motives. But you are, as well, lifted up by love and laughter, so that you want to do what you have to do. And, in fact, you do have to do it — it is in you to do it. For you are teachers, and that is the nature of teachers. You are, perhaps, the last idealists, and you still believe in your dreams.
“You will need all that, and courage and endurance, for as teachers, you are spared nothing, none of the sorrow, none of the pain. But in compensation, you miss none of the joy. I confidently predict that in the months ahead you will take far more satisfaction in the successes of your students than you will in your own triumphs with them. I predict you will instantly forget those triumphs and dwell instead upon the moment missed, the rare child who got away. I predict you will work too hard again and become irritable and unreasonable when it doesn’t really matter, and be wonderful every time it really counts.
“You will make a difference in the lives of your students, and they will add richness and meaning to yours. And in the best, most selfless, most helpful ways, you will love those children and they will love you. But, of course, you know all that — and that is why you are sitting here this afternoon.”
I keep in touch with Jonathan, and I think he might appreciate having his words shared further afield than one particular school during a particular start-of-school meeting. As an experienced school head, now retired, he knew how to dive beneath the superficial exigencies of school life, educational policy, fads and pendulum swings to remind us of what really mattered.
Share it with a teacher you may know. Remind them what matters, who they are, and the effect they’re having beyond today’s math lesson or recess duty.
Todd R. Nelson is principal of Brooksville Elementary School. Teacher Appreciation Week is May 2-6.