Teachers Have Been Amazing This Year

Dear teachers, Last spring, you made the shift from face-to-face teaching to pandemic pedagogy. In a matter of days, you found innovative solutions to huge challenges. You designed virtual lessons with limited time and resources. There was no roadmap or blueprint. It wasn’t perfect. There were some mistakes along the way. But you were there for your students. Every. Single. Day. You’ve proven that social distance doesn’t mean relational distance. Despite the roadblocks, you have built a classroom community on empathy and kindness where students engage in meaningful collaboration. You’ve done check-ins and partnered with families. You helped find resources for students who were struggling. You’ve experimented with new approaches and taken creative risks. You’ve continued to learn. You’re reading books, watching videos, listening to podcasts, and reading articles. You’re curating content and engaging in professional discussions. You’re crafting meaningful lessons that empower students with voice and choice, like that awesome scavenger hunt or the maker project or the blogging project or that choice menu or the game-based learning activity. 2020 has been hard. We’ve seen wildfires and natural disasters and an economic downturn. Oh and apparently murder hornets. Seriously. Murder hornets. Meanwhile, teaching is especially challenging right now. It can feel draining when you have a barrage of emails to answer or when you do a video conference and face a wall of black screens. Meanwhile, some of the social media comments about teachers have been downright toxic. But know this, you are impacting lives. Right now, there’s a student who feels known and heard because of you. There’s a student who is passionate about learning because of you. There are students who will remember you forever, as someone who was there for them in these dark times. You are changing the world, even when you can’t see it. So, thank you.