It Takes a Village: World Teachers’ Day 2020
I am a teacher’s daughter.
This means I grew up ‘playing-school’ on the cold concrete floor of my basement, lecturing to an empty ‘classroom’ in rural Michigan.
This means that once I did grow up, I got to ‘play school’ with her actual students, teaching them writing, history, and answering their questions about my new home in Washington, D.C.
But this also means I watched, first-hand from quarantine in Oxford, Michigan, how the world collectively revered and then subsequently endangered our forgotten frontline works (educators), just like my mom.
On this ‘World Teachers Day’, our celebrations must not only be a little bit louder, but a little bit deeper. I don’t have to remind you we aren’t living in normal times, but it also must be said that teaching, in this year specifically, is perhaps the least normal year the educational realm is experiencing. But, we’re lucky. Educators are simply some of the most resilient and dynamic professionals out there. And while we celebrate them as competent, hail them as superheroes, who is checking on the individuals, making sure our schools are not only standing, but also places of inspiration, growth, and refuge?
Renee Upham, my mother, is a second-grade teacher in a slow, pastoral corner of the Midwest. Genesee County, where she currently teaches, is currently leading fifth in the state for COVID-19 cases. Despite increasing infection rates, students are back for full, in-person learning. Just yesterday, seemingly, I watched my mother and her co-workers work far past the summer sunsets in an effort to tackle what many have now called crisis teaching. Yet now, come September, they are all back: new classes, new challenges, and unfortunately new dangers awaiting them. “What I find most dangerous about being back in school is the lack of respect for the questions about COVID that we still don’t have the answers yet,” my mother explains to me, “there’s just so many unknowns about this virus, and only some school districts are treating this with caution.”
Fortunately, many communities around the country have rallied behind their teachers in whatever ways they can. In a world that’s becoming increasingly isolated, disconnected, and quarantined off from one another, it’s the small gestures that can mean the most in times of severe uncertainty. Back in March, when the pandemic first hit the United States to a degree that shut down many of the nation’s schools — Oaktree included — support came flooding in quite literally all the way up to my front door. “I had parents and their children drop off honey and gift cards and pictures the kids drew me back when the pandemic first started,” she told me. She also added, “everyone helped me, my family listened to my venting and confusion about virtual learning in the Spring, my co-workers helped each other with learning materials, I mean, even my dogs helped me make little riddle videos for the kids!” They say it takes a village to raise a child. I know that’s true for educating them, too. In the first few months of the pandemic, I watched the world both close in on and embrace my mother and everyone that surrounds her.
But where are we now? The virus hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s made itself known. It’s likely only burrowed itself deeper into our streets, homes, and schools. And as lovely and bright as a jar full of honey and a drawing of our family dog, Roo, on our front porch in the March snow is — it’s not enough to support our teachers now, not six months into a pandemic. For my mom, she feels that, “What would really help teachers in this school year is for parents to continue raising resilient and independent kids who get lots of undivided attention at home. Children need engagement right now, and this kind of involvement in their lives is going to make their lives better. And what’s better for students is what’s better for teachers.” While this country needs to decide if teachers are superheroes or babysitters, like my mother often asks, and structural reform regarding work hazards, pay, and district budgets needs to be implemented, the work can start at home, with you. For six months, I watched my mother, her desk adjacent to my own virtual learning station, go from crisis teaching, to emergency teaching, to catastrophe teaching. I watched what every letter, every text, every late-night Zoom session with parents and co-workers and students — both old and new — did for her, and for our family. It takes a village to educate a child, but it also takes one to support a teacher. On this very different, very pertinent ‘World Teachers’ Day’, express the magnitude of your appreciation via letter, text, email, call, or Zoom with the educators in your lives — you cannot possibly fathom the weight this gratitude carries.
I am the daughter of a teacher. I know what it’s like to love one. On this ‘World Teachers’ Day’, reach out, reach far, and check-in with those who are keeping this country running from underground, unseen, but never unfelt.
By Olivia Upham
