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Dear Teacher: I See You
This is not a pep talk, I promise
Dear Teacher,
I can’t claim to empathize with you — not this year. I stepped away. You are still in it. Despite that, I’ve been thinking about you since the start of the new year. Yes, it’s 2021. Does that mean all of your problems and challenges from 2020 will fade away? Hardly. You’ve had a week or two off, but now you’re headed straight back into the fire.
I am not a person who believes in false, toxic positivity. I believe in being real. And no, that doesn’t mean being pessimistic. I am actually a hopeful person. It is possible to be a realist and to be hopeful. But in thinking about what you continue to face, I don’t envy it at all.
Most educators teach because it gives them a sense of purpose; what you do each and every day with students matters. I know because that’s why I used to teach in brick-and-mortar schools. I felt like it was important to never give up, not on a single child. In my career of nearly 20 years, there were a handful that were either sociopaths or that I just couldn’t come to understand or connect with. Just a handful, which is not bad out of several thousand. But this year is different; this year, you can’t throw out the anchor every time a student falls off of the boat. Nope — instead, you need to keep going. You can’t fix the problems some…