Teacher Appreciation Week is coming, and this educator is starting to cringe: ‘I’ll trade appreciation for respect any day’
Teacher Appreciation Week is fast approaching — the first full week in May — but New York City educator Emily James is already starting to cringe.
Every year, the week is sponsored by the National Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) in an effort, the group’s website says, “to show our thanks and gratitude” to “stellar educators.” How? Here are headlines on some Internet stories about how to mark the week:
- “All the Perks and Freebies You Can Get for Teacher Appreciation Week”
- “7 Meaningful Ways to Celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week,” with the first suggestion being “gifts” and the sixth being “classroom supplies” (because, unfortunately, too many classrooms aren’t properly equipped).
- “Teachers Can Get Free Flights to the Caribbean in Honor of Teacher Appreciation Week”
To James, this week represents nothing more than lip service to teachers and is “a Band-Aid for a much larger problem, which is a systemic lack of respect for our educators.” In the post below, she notes that there are no appreciation weeks for doctors and other professionals.
To James, teachers need more than an annual appreciation week, which she finds cringeworthy. James, a writer as well as an educator, created a petition on change.org demanding paid parental leave for city public school teachers last year. It garnered 85,000 signatures, leading to negotiations that ended with city public school teachers getting paid parental leave starting last June.
Her work has been published in the New York Daily News, HuffPost and various literary magazines. She was the recipient of the 2019 Bechtel Prize from Teachers and Writers Magazine. You can follow her on Twitter @missg3rd.
By Emily James
As Teacher Appreciation Week comes near, I feel my annual cringe coming on. While the occasional “THANK YOU” pencil is nice (and I do love a buy-one-get-one-free Chipotle burrito), this week often feels like a faulty Band-Aid for a serious issue that educators in our country face day in and day out.
As a society, we don’t flaunt lawyer appreciation weeks, doctor appreciation weeks, engineer appreciation weeks. Why? Because the image and perceptions of these careers hold a certain respect from our communities, along with a certain respect within the field.
As educators, it often feels like no matter how many years we prove ourselves as competent, to make the CONTINUE READING: Teacher Appreciation Week is coming, and this educator is starting to cringe: ‘I’ll trade appreciation for respect any day’ - The Washington Post