Teaching Teachers, Part 2

I love teachers.  I absolutely love them.  I loved being a teacher and I love my teacher friends.

It has been a very busy summer of working with teachers.  I've been a professor for a literacy assessments course, a co-instructor for a math methods course, a research assistant for two different professional development math courses.  All four populations of teachers were decidedly unique, and I enjoyed working with each one of them.

There was one very obvious commonality among the four groups:  all of these awesome professionals are dedicated to improving their practice for the benefit of their students.  As I have written about in previous posts, I miss teaching.  A lot.  But having the opportunity to work with teachers is pretty great, too, and I found myself so impressed with these individuals' commitment to and passion for teaching.

It infuriates me when I hear people say that teachers have the summer off, because good teachers NEVER get the summer off.  They are continually working, reading, planning, taking classes, buying supplies, finding resources, and doing a million other things for their students.  I have witnessed first hand over the last few months how hard so many teachers work, giving up family time, vacation time, relaxation time to deepen their own understanding of math and literacy.  The impact these teachers will have on their students in the coming years cannot be overstated!

I could not have anticipated how fun it would be to teach and work with all of these teachers over the past several months in such a variety of ways!  I learned so much from them and they have helped me to develop my skills because teaching adults is a completely different experience than teaching children!

So teachers, thank you.  You are amazing!

Happy Tails to you!