Digital thank yous will have to do during this ‘Teacher Appreciation Week to remember’
Teacher Appreciation Week has taken on a new meaning in a year where the coronavirus pandemic has altered the way school is held and shown how hard it is to be a teacher.
The school celebrations that are normally held the first week of May for Teacher Appreciation Week have largely been canceled because COVID-19 has closed school buildings.
Instead, schools, parents and students have turned to mostly giving a digital thank you this week to teachers who’ve taken on the challenge of educating students remotely during the pandemic.
“It goes without saying that this will be a Teacher Appreciation Week to remember,” Wake County Superintendent Cathy Moore said in a YouTube video to the district’s 10,000 teachers. “Rest assured that we will never forget.
“We will never forget how you led our students and families through bewildering times while keeping a sharp focus on our core mission: preparing young lives for bright futures that will come. And they will come, I assure you.”
The Wake County school system has encouraged people to thank teachers this week on social media using #WCPSSThankATeacher. Teacher Appreciation Week runs this year from May 4-8.
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction urged people to shine an outdoor light for 20 minutes on Tuesday night for Teacher Appreciation Day and to thank teachers on social media using #NCLighthouseLeaders. The hashtag is built around how the state has seven lighthouses that are viewed as symbols of strength.
Thursday was originally when the Wake County school system planned to announce its new Teacher of the Year. winner Wake has rescheduled the event to February. in the meantime, the district had its 20 Teacher of the Year semi-finalists record a short message for their colleagues.
Teachers miss seeing students face-to-face
Matt Scialdone, an English teacher at Middle Creek High School in Apex, said he’s missed the hugs and high-fives that he’d normally get from students. So he’s treasuring this week’s thank-you notes and including them in a folder that he looks through on bad days.
“It’s kind of hard to teach to a laptop screen and not feel that energy coming your way,” Scialdone said in an interview Wednesday. “Teachers are really missing that positive feedback during the course of a day when we’re with our kids. Any kind of teacher appreciation this year goes even further.”
This week is tinged with sadness over what’s been lost from the education experience due to the pandemic.
“This has been such a turbulent semester that Teacher Appreciation Week was the last thing on my mind,” Bryan Christopher, an English teacher at Riverside High School in Durham, said in an interview. “I wish I could do more for my students, my parents and my colleagues.”
It’s uncertain when schools will be allowed to reopen. But teachers say they’re eager to get back in front of their students.
“I don’t hear anyone say I want to stick with remote learning and not go back to the classroom,” Kim Mackey, a social studies teacher at Green Hope High School in Cary, said in an interview. “It’s given more appreciation for the magic that goes on in the classroom that can’t be replicated digitally.”
This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 11:39 AM.
