Teaching is one of the few professions for which virtually everyone has an opinion. As teachers are civil servants, their contracts - pay, conditions, progressions - are subject to universal scrutiny. As everyone had teachers at some points in their life, there are many personal references that can be made about teaching. Problems in society are very often laid at the feet of teachers and schools as a sort of safe ground in which to base complaints. On top of this, the actual act of teaching - living up to the expectations of a principal, a school district, parents, and students - is grueling. Year after year, schools seek to fill positions for teachers that have left. And yet with all that somehow feels arrayed against teachers, there is always a new cohort to try and fill the shoes of their predecessors. What is it in the spirit of teaching that both challenges us personally and yet still is attractive to many?

In my mind, the truth is in struggle. Teachers believe that they can help children grow in a way that makes our world a better place. Teachers see past the seemingly endless structures, plans, and meetings to their daily interactions with children, and see that the work with students makes the other stuff worth it. The power in teaching is in the ability to take complicated, complex information and help each child make sense of it and make it their own. Each of us can remember a teacher in our lives who made us understand ourselves, see something clearly, or just believe in our own abilities. (Take a moment to do this.  For me, it was a slightly scattered Scottish history teacher who made me feel that the point of the work was the struggle that I was undergoing.) Deal teachers work a classroom, five times a day, keeping a lesson flowing, checking that between 15 and 25 students are keeping up - each at their own, individual pace - managing small humans who are at their peak of adolescent and personal turmoil (middle school). They have to be able to react instantly to a question or a disruption - and not with a personal reaction but one that moves the class forward, planned and thoughtfully. They work to keep students' spirits up - knowing that a loved child learns better - and to keep their own energy high. Teachers are expected - by all of us - to know where their charges are emotionally, intellectually, and socially - and keep this knowledge juggling throughout a day in which the see group after group of students. And they do all of this every day.

They do this because teachers care deeply about their students. They design their work to help individuals, to challenge others. They share their worries and concerns with colleagues and school leaders. They make time for their students in many different ways. They take the role of stewards of children's education with the utmost seriousness. They believe in what they are doing, and believe that maybe, just maybe, they will be that teacher that a student recalls down the road with fondness and appreciation. Above all, teaching is about loving to help others grow.

Almost every day someone comes in to Deal to ask about a teacher they had when they were here thirty years ago or twenty years ago. They remember them, remember those moments in class. They will tell me about a certain teacher as their eyes light up, and they look around hoping to see them just there in the corridor. When I traveled with our students to China a few weeks ago, they shared their favorite teachers and school moments with me. What I know is that our teachers today are making those same memories for your children as those from previous generations. 

This week is teacher appreciation week across the country and here at Deal. Please feel free to drop a note to a teacher to share something your child has said about them, to show them how their work is affecting your child's life, or just to say that you appreciate that they have chosen our school to do their labor of love. 

NB - Each year I tell the teaching staff that the reason we continue to grow is because of who we have teaching our children. Now I need YOU to do your part: please come in and register your child for next year. We know you are going to do it - we have a very small attrition rate from year to year. We just need you to do it. Our registration numbers have been growing very slowly this year, and we need to fix that going forward. 

To this end, we will have Registration at Deal this Saturday, May 7, from 1 until 5 pm. What a great time to take care of this!