Celebrate National Education Week now!  November 18-22 is National Education Week.   I personally have many reasons to celebrate.  I think it is particularly appropriate that this week is so close to the Thanksgiving holiday.  This educator has many things for which to be grateful.  How about you?

• I’m grateful that a wonderful teacher, Esther Waggoner taught with so much enthusiasm when I was in the third grade, that she made me want to grow up and join the teaching profession.  Thank you Mrs. Waggoner from the Mason, Ohio school district.
• I’m grateful that at age eight I chose the right profession for myself.  What are the chances of that happening?
• I’m grateful that so many of my former students honor my relationships that I built with them by staying in touch with me.  What joy that adds to my life.
• I’m grateful that my teaching path had its twists and turns that gave me such rich experiences.  I never dreamed at the outset of my career that I would teach preschool, every elementary grade, high school and now work with college students.  What a blessing this rich variety has been.
• I’m grateful for the creativity a teacher can bring to the classroom.  Great teaching is an art form and the classroom can be enriched by it.
• I’m grateful that a favorite high school band, the Lakota West Marching Firebirds of West Chester, Ohio, will be marching in the Macy’s Day parade on television this Thanksgiving Day.  Watch for them!  They are not pictured above.  All the photos on their website seemed to be copyrighted.  However, watch for their red and white uniforms and their great sound.

Teachers March Together

However there are some things about the teaching profession that currently sadden me.

• It saddens me that it seems to be so accepted to widely criticize the teaching profession in today’s media.
• It saddens me that it seems so acceptable to vote against levies for education and our kids’ needs.
• It is my dream that all the great teachers in the profession (and there hundreds of thousands of them) will work hard to reestablish the reputation of professionalism in this teaching profession that I love so much.
• We do this by focusing on the students’ needs and their families.
• We do this with commitment to our profession. Through our thorough preparation and creativity in our daily lessons we can re-create a respect for teachers.
• We can’t capitulate to the single-minded obsession about test scores.  We need to speak calmly and with reason until our voices are heard.  Great teaching is so much more than testing.  Yes, you heard me.  Great teaching > test scores.  Some of our hardest working and most committed teachers are being maligned because they are committed to working with a student population who are at-risk learners.  That makes no sense.
• We need to teach our students lessons about living life successfully in addition to the academics we teach.  They need to learn about the value of risk taking, recovering from failures, thinking outside the box and the power of persistence.  Some of our country’s greatest success stories were the brainchild of former students who didn’t test well.
• We became teachers to change lives.

TEACH…To Change Lives

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Contact Dauna Easley to speak to your group:  dauna@cinci.rr.com