By Your Side: A Letter To America’s Teachers
Photo Credit: John Locher, Associated Press
Dear Teachers,
I love the beginning of a school year, students and teachers beam with excitement as we greet a new year of learning together. As family members wave goodbye to their children and teachers gather their new classes, we all share nerves and eagerness to get started. This is the time we begin to cultivate relationships of caring. As we learn each others’ names, we all share a commitment to get to know each others’ stories, the ones that will sustain and propel us.
At the beginning of the school year, I find myself so hopeful of the possibilities the year will hold. Yet this year feels different. It hits and sits differently. It is not the year we had hoped for; it is not what we had needed for a start of the year that felt both familiar and comfortable.
For the reasons we know all too well, this year is going to hold exceptional challenges. Many teachers are facing both familiar struggles — large class sizes, strained resources, lessening autonomy — and newer challenges — mitigating a pandemic with polarized responses, attacks on humanizing curriculum, and heated school board meetings.
Even as we face these challenges and are pulled in many directions, we know our priority is our students. I hope when things get tough, you’ll remind yourself of the impact teachers’ work has on students, families and communities.
Our work as teachers is to continue to build the learning communities that connect students to their potential. In our classrooms, our students learn to have authentic dialogue with each other. Whether it is pre-k or 12th grade, we teach our students to carefully listen to their peers, to encourage each other to expand their thinking, and to harness the power of dialogue to seek to understand each other with compassion and empathy. This is how we build community within our classrooms. We co-construct ways for all of our students to have the space to be themselves fully, for everyone to be seen, heard, and respected.
And as we build those community spaces, we encourage our students to proudly see themselves as interconnected members of a community that thrives when we build collective wellness. Every member of our school deserves the right to learn in physical and emotional safety and every member can help build a space where we all can grow. This includes collective minded COVID safety procedures, identity affirming curriculums, bold and complete historical accounts respectful of people of color, LGBTQIA supports, linguistically accessible learning, and inclusive practices for people with learning and thinking differences.
Society may not yet mirror the supportive communities we’re building in our classrooms, but we know that this is the work we are charged to do in order to create a better world for tomorrow.
What you do is enough. When you change a life, you transform society, a society that, one day soon, will be more like the beautiful communities of our classrooms. We can’t do this alone and we don’t have to. Every time I need a reminder of this truth, I turn to the words of my friend and colleague, Cindy Soule, the 2021 Maine Teacher of the Year, who wrote to me: “I know I can do this because you are by my side. Together, we will share delight, surprise, energy, and confront Education as change makers, as uniters, as friends. Together we will learn, rise, disrupt.”
As the 2021 National Teacher of the Year, I’m here to walk beside you. I continue to commit to elevating our voices as educators as we advocate and inspire a joyous and just education for all. My sincerest hope is that we all stay well in mind, body, and soul. We are clear-eyed about the realities but even more optimistic for our students, families, and communities’ future.
Siempre con ustedes,
Juliana Urtubey, NBCT
2021 National Teacher of the Year