Prayer for teacher appreciation day

For teachers who know their subjects, their tech,
all the shifts in styles of education, and
who understand how what happens at home
influences everything,
I give thanks.

For teachers who are expected
to keep students safe from gun tragedy
to please every parent on the
“how to deal with covid spectrum,”
to buy supplies with their own resources,
and not complain about level funding,
I give thanks.

For teachers who guess every day
at how to reach some kindergartener,
whose hearts break
when a teenager dies by suicide,
who celebrate the successes
in sports and drama, after-school jobs,
Poetry-Outloud and recovery,
I give thanks.

For teachers of art, music, PE,
who need to learn so many, many names,
teachers of self-contained classrooms
who focus on fewer,
each with a different journey,
teachers of ELL* or HiSET
who specialize in saying “good-bye,”
I give thanks.

For much joked-upon substitutes,
retired teachers who find new ways
to be educators every single day,
parent volunteers, student teachers,

for teachers who changed my life
and those who are changing lives today,

I give thanks.

• Also sometimes called ESOL or ESL.

This is my mother, Liz Fosmark in her first year of high school teaching in Elkins, Iowa, 1940. English and … Drama, which class the entire football team decided to take to get their grade points up. Every one of them was physically much bigger than she was. They got the grades they wanted. She did teach a second year. She was required to quit when she married … she opposed a long engagement. Liz loved her subjects and she loved most of the teachers she had ever known. I remember her saying to me, “You can’t just put the two of those together. It takes so much more to be a teacher.”