Let’s Hear It for Teachers and School Leaders

This time of year, is always nostalgic for us retired teachers and anyone who worked in a school environment. A woman who ran our high school cafeteria for many years still attends the class reunions embracing the women who attend just as she did when acting as a surrogate mom while dishing out the spaghetti and listening to the woes of teen-age angst.

Teachers today have earned my deepest respect given the vitriol and lack of support mounting against them in many states, especially as we near our national elections. Our politicians have waded too deeply into the professional waters of education making them appear as highly moral, highly informed, super caring advocates of the young when they are really interested in their own power. It is easy to use the young when grabbing for such power and to ignore or even bypass the professionals for whom such power-driven politicians have no respect. We are at a vortex where the winds of control are circling the simple schools where our eager children come to learn.

I am hopeful that we citizens might just have had enough of censorship of reading materials, insidious plans to remove tenure (which prevents dismissing a teacher without due process, something other professionals enjoy), the demolishing of the Department of Education, the establishment of a critical body to credential teachers on “patriotic values,” and offering merit pay only when students earn higher test scores. And the agenda goes on. I believe most Americans have had enough.

Here are three other reasons why I am hopeful we can challenge and overcome these threats. One is Amanda Jones, a school librarian in Louisiana who has recently attracted much attention appearing on Morning Joe, a television talk/news program and granting an interview in the popular The New York Times Book Review. Jones began challenging her state’s school library censorship plans in 2022. She is an anti-censorship advocate. She has won awards from the American Library Association and the American Association of School Librarians, among others. Her motto is “Free People Read Freely,” and it is on T-shirts and coffee cups and banners. She sleeps with a shotgun under her bed and carries a pistol when driving in the rural roads of Louisiana because of the many threats she receives from the political ultra-right. “I’m just a school librarian from a two red-light town in Louisiana,” she says. But she’s undaunting for the rights of kids to read the classics and ordinary children’s literature now being savaged like the butcher’s cleaver in the slaughter line.

My second reason for hope is William McRaven, the retired admiral who took down Osama bin Laden. McRaven won the Courage and Civility Award with 50 million dollars to give to his charities, the top one being for the children of parents who have died in various wars protecting our country. In an interview with Time magazine, McRaven underscored the value other countries place on our American leadership in the world and the need to vote for leaders who will keep our alliances strong. What keeps him up at night? His answer is surprising. “People think I would answer something like Iran or North Korea, but my answer always is: K-12 education. If we’re not educating to have STEM skills, think critically, and understand other cultures, then we are not going to be the national security leaders we need.”

Third on my list is Sr. Ruth’s Kids Campaign, an interfaith ministry which is part of a larger project called Interfaith Wellness, Inc. founded by Sister Loretta Spotila, CSA and named for the late Sister Ruth Kerrigan, CSA. This amazing children’s project prepares kids for returning to school in one of the poorest areas of our country, the Appalachian hills of Irvine, Kentucky. With volunteers, Loretta’s group gets kids excited about learning by providing a picnic for them while parents shop at the “free” clothing give away for back-to-school been distributed earlier in the summer to help give the little readers a jump start on their reading skills. Sister Loretta has organized a “Back to School Bash” at several churches in the area to meet with parents and assist them with factual information about early reading. A “Breakfast Club” will soon start in the elementary schools to advance reading interest and skill when the kids begin school. 

Reflection

My list of respected educators includes the sisters in my congregation who are still teaching either full time or part time extending the love of God to students of all ages from pre-school through college. They have an endless store of love for students and education.

Our faith is a religion of teaching. Evangelization, preaching, writing, are all parts of the mission to “Go and teach all nations” as Jesus commissioned his disciples to do. And who is not touched by the story of Jesus inviting the children to come to him despite the protesting of the disciples? (Matt 19:13-14) Jesus obviously loved children as shown in his many references to their innocence, their angels, their singing of praise in the Temple. The Christian Scriptures are full of references to Jesus and children. 

In these early days of seasonal change, let’s pray for teachers and students. And let’s pray for parents who need courage to let go so often in a child’s life. And, of course, let’s pray for political leaders that they be sensitive to the needs of quality education and work to provide for that education.