An open letter to teachers everywhere

WHAT you do is full on. It’s non-stop. It’s chaotic. Challenging. And comes with such an immensely huge responsibility. Parents everywhere thank you.

TO teachers everywhere,

Today is World Teachers’ Day — and as us weary parents trudge through the last week of the school holidays, we want you to know that we get it.

What you do is full on. It’s non-stop. It’s chaotic. Challenging. It must be so very frustrating — but just as rewarding. And such an immensely huge responsibility.

So on behalf of parents everywhere, we want you to know how much we appreciate you, and all you do for our children.

Leila, 7, is a massive fan of her teacher.

’I like her because she has blue eyes’

Even 30 years later, I still remember my Kindy teacher. I remember the dresses she wore, the colour of her lipstick and the sound of her voice. She was so calming, so nurturing. She was my favourite person, and she helped me learn to love school.

I remember my Year 6 teacher. The strong, capable woman who gave me an A++ for my assignment on local government because I found the White Pages in my parents’ bedroom one afternoon, tracked down the number for my local council and asked to speak to the mayor.

I asked him what he liked about his job and whether he liked helping people.

He laughed — but he answered. And it may have been all those years ago, but she gave me the confidence to think that I could do that.

That phone call gave me my first taste into the world of journalism, and I am forever thankful to her.

That taste gathered momentum with the passion and love of literacy that my Year 10 English teacher instilled in me. The way she spoke about the power of the written word, the way she helped me understand and respect it, still gives me goosebumps. She is one of the reasons I am a writer today.

Then there was the journalism uni lecturer that changed my life a few years later. I’d had a bad work experience week at a well-known Sydney magazine, and I wasn’t sure this was the career path for me after all. But instead of shutting me down, she encouraged me to write about it.

So I did. It was my first experience writing opinion pieces, writing from the heart — and I was hooked. She made me feel that I had the ability to write and was good enough to be read. I’ll never forget that, or her.

Michelle Pfeiffer plays an inspirational teacher in the 1995 film Dangerous Minds. Picture: Alamy

Jack Black’s character in the 2003 film School of Rock displays a unique teaching style. Picture: Alamy

Teachers are mentors. They inspire, they lead by example, they are a source of strength and support for our community’s most vulnerable. Our children.

Teachers give our kids voices that deserve to be heard, and understood. They develop our strengths and strengthen our weaknesses, and give us the foundations on which to grow.

You truly deserve gold medals for what you do. And with the average Aussie teacher paid just over $20 an hour — which is less than 20-something babysitters charge — it’s certainly a labour of love.

But it’s not labour we take for granted.

You do so much for so little, and you deserve so much more.

Thank you for coming in to work with a smile, and making our little ones feel supported, feel safe and feel important.

Thank you for teaching them all the things we don’t have time to. Thanks for trying again when they don’t understand, for sticking with it when they don’t listen, and for understanding if they’re having a bad day, and helping it get better.

You are helping raise the next generation of Australian teachers. Doctors. Nurses. Lawyers. Vets. Policemen and women. Writers.

Children who will grow up to help cure cancer or save the Great Barrier Reef from dying. You have played a hand in that, and that’s extraordinary.

These kids need you just as much as we do.

And we thank you.

Love,

Parents everywhere

Originally published as An open letter to teachers everywhere