What comes after Teacher Appreciation Week?
Appreciation is nice, but the teachers I know need more. Here are three things we can provide.
Like many educators I know, I have a love/hate relationship with Teacher Appreciation Week.
When I was a teacher, I loved getting treats from my schools and notes from my students. In my work at Modern Classrooms Project, I’ll take any opportunity to thank teachers for their hard work. And as a parent, I like helping my kids express their gratitude towards their excellent teachers.
But I also can’t help but feel like… this is what teachers get? We give up easier and higher-paying jobs then work tirelessly to help other people’s kids learn, and in return there’s a week when we get donuts and cards? I don’t mean to be ungrateful. But teaching is really hard - and, for much of the rest of the year, thankless - work. There’s a reason teachers burn out. I think these teachers deserve better.
Which makes me wonder:
What can we provide teachers, after Teacher Appreciation Week ends, to make teaching more sustainable and enjoyable?
There are obvious answers here: higher pay, smaller class sizes, mastery-based promotion, more support for students facing social-emotional challenges, a culture that values and honors teaching and learning. I want to see all of these things.
I also recognize that these are big asks - and changes that will require significant societal and policy change. I like thinking big! I also believe that there are more immediate things we can do, on a much smaller scale, to make teaching better tomorrow.
Here are three.
1) More practical training.
Most teachers receive plenty of professional development. But in my experience, and the experiences of many of the teachers I’ve spoken to, much of this training provides little value. Teacher PD is often focused on theories about teaching, or techniques that may work well in some contexts but not in others.
Most of the real problems teachers face, however, are both practical and universal. Every teacher encounters the same fundamental challenge - the learners in their classrooms have different needs - and every teacher needs techniques they can adapt to their own unique contexts, starting tomorrow.
If you’re going to take teachers’ time for training, make sure they leave with simple, concrete steps they can take to better meet their learners’ needs.
2) More useful tools.
There are thousands of edtech tools that promise to make teachers’ lives easier. But most of these tools are complicated to use, fail to account for individual teachers’ unique circumstances, and (worst of all) reinforce ineffective one-size-fits-all models of education. As a result, the typical classroom today functions more or less like the typical classroom 100 years ago, just with more screens.
But if we can build tech tools with pedagogy in mind - tools that make learning more accessible, enhance high-quality human interaction, and keep every student appropriately challenged and supported every day - we can help teachers do what they do best: connect with young people. And in so doing, we can make teaching and learning more enjoyable for educators and students alike.
Teachers need tools that are simple, immediately useful, and pedagogically sound. Let’s build them.
3) More trust.
It seems to me that, in the face of teacher shortages and growing achievement gaps, teaching as a profession is becoming more standardized. We want every student to receive rigorous instruction, but we aren’t sure if every teacher can provide it. So we give teachers high-quality materials and tell them exactly what to teach and when.
I’m all for high-quality materials. But if we want to keep teachers in the classroom, and provide instruction that accounts for the real differences between students, we need to trust and empower teachers to meet their learners’ needs using the techniques and tools those teachers believe are best.
And while I personally believe that MCP’s Virtual Mentorship Program is the best teacher PD on the planet, and that Insta~Lesson is the simplest and most useful edtech tool on the market - I’d never want to impose either on a teacher who hasn’t opted in. I want to see teachers choosing the approaches they believe will work best for the students they know best, and then committing to those approaches.
If we’re going to give teachers the responsibility of shaping our young people’s potential, we need to give them great training and tools - and trust those teachers to use both as they see fit.
This is possible.
The larger changes I really want to see - an end to age-based promotion, better-resourced schools, teachers treated and compensated like the highly skilled professionals they are - sometimes feel out of reach.
But I know that the changes I’ve suggested above are well within reach. I’ve seen them happen! I’m fortunate in my work at MCP to see incredible leaders give teachers the training, tools, and trust to meet every learner’s needs. Then I see those teachers enjoy teaching, and their students enjoy learning, more than every before.
At the end of the day, what we call our education system is really just a lot of educators teaching a lot of classes every day. So if we can make changes at the classroom level, we can change the system too.
And that, after this week ends, is what I think our teachers and students need.
Two cool opportunities
One thing teachers don’t need is more to do. But if you - or teachers you know - are interested, I recommend you:
1) Join my upcoming live-online course with RocketPD.
This fall, I’ll be leading a five-session deep dive into instruction that meets every learner’s needs. In partnership with the awesome team at RocketPD, I’ll explain - and then help participants apply - a three-step process keeps every student appropriately challenged and supported, every day. I hope to see you (and your colleagues) there!
2) Share your story through Teachers in Their Power.
I’m a big believer in the power of storytelling, and I don’t think anyone tells teachers’ stories as well as Kat Clark and her team. Through photos, videos, and interviews, this project is sharing what it really means to teach - but that depends on teachers being willing to tell their stories. I hope you’ll join them!
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t wish you a very happy Teacher Appreciation Week! I hope we can make the other weeks of your year equally rewarding too.