Last spring, teachers were heroes because they did the impossible when the pandemic shut the world down.
Educators started inventing ways to teach online when in-person classes were abruptly stopped.
Literally overnight, they had to figure out how to teach music, art, and biology through a computer screen.
Hours were spent modifying lessons for online use, posting those lessons and partnering with parents to complete the school year.
This year, schools decided to offer both in-person and remove learning, but administrators did not realize the huge burden they were putting on teachers.
Imagine teaching 20 fidgety students on a Zoom session while keeping an eye on the 10 who are sitting in your classroom.
Can’t ignore the online students.
Can’t ignore the ones sitting right in front of you.
And administrators are blaming you for students who didn’t bother to show up and for failing grades.
In the spring, YouTube videos flourished with parents realizing how they’d taken for granted the difficulties educators faced every single day.
Unfortunately, those brief few weeks when the world thought educators were heroes didn’t last long.
The lessons teachers learned about themselves, however, will last a lifetime.
You can accomplish more than you ever thought possible.
If you handled an online class while simultaneously teaching in person, nothing can stop you. You reached deep into your tool box to teach, and you did so with grace.
You learned you will always be asked to do the impossible by those without a clue as to what you do.
Parents should’ve realized teaching requires intelligence, patience and the skills to teach a difficult subject to all the different learners in the class.
Administrators should’ve learned to think twice before assigning ridiculous paperwork to already overworked teachers, especially a supervisor who has not stepped foot in a classroom in more than three years.
You taught every single day to students wearing masks while you had to wear one as well. A teacher knows whether or not a student is learning by the discouraged or triumphant look on their face.
Eyebrows don’t tell that story.
The community demanded ridiculous goals from you and, to make things worse, the powers that be decided it would pay exorbitant fees to testing companies to tell parents what you could’ve told them for free – kids are not where they’re supposed to be.
Teachers have the answer: let educators teach students instead of teaching to a test and they’ll all be caught up in 12 weeks.
But the year wasn’t a total wash. Students learned something about teachers.
They learned their teacher would endure anything to make sure their students received a good education.
Teachers demonstrated when life blows up in your face, you gather up the pieces and keep going.
They learned they can count on their teacher to never give up on them.
Despite being exhausted, both physically and emotionally, teachers will spend the summer getting ready.
They’ll hang curtains in the classroom, create cozy reading corners and sit through online lectures to improve their teaching methods. They’ll have an online back-up plan ready just in case covid sweeps the country again.
They’ll do all of this knowing the community does not fully appreciate or respect them despite knowing how hard their job is.
They’ll do it despite knowing they’re not being paid what they’re worth.
They’ll do it because they love being an educator. They love your kids. They live for that one moment when a student’s face says “I got it.”
Teachers, you survived.
And if no one’s told you lately, thank you for never giving up.
Thank you for the generous heart you bring to your students.
Thank you for doing the impossible in an impossible year.
Forget Superman and Wonder Woman. The real superheroes are in our classrooms. They wore a mask instead of a cape.
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.