The legendary Dale Dennis, former Kansas school finance guru who recently retired after working for Kansas school children into his 80s, used to end his presentations to education officials with this directive, “Don’t forget your teachers.” It was a simple reminder to administrators and the folks downtown, that their main job was to defend, cheerlead, stand on their head, whatever it took, to make it so teachers could do their job — teach and improve the lives of students through education. If there was ever a time that request — “Don’t forget your teachers” — should be heeded, it is now.
Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson recently said after his 50-stop tour across the state that administrators and teachers are exhausted from all the changes they made last year and since the start of this school year because of COVID-19. And it’s only September.
And it’s not just teachers who are stressed; it’s you too. It’s our families and kids. It’s your colleagues and school district staff. We weren’t prepared for COVID coming back like this. For a brief moment, like in June, we thought, “Well, this COVID thing may be over.” But it’s not. It’s still killing us and we’re still fighting about it. With everything going on, we need a break.
Personally, I think we should shut down the country for two weeks; call it The Great National Post-Summer Re-Set (GNPSRS). Everyone gets to do what they want — relax, meditate, hike in the mountains, play in the ocean, walk through parks; eat lots of pizza. Also, on my proposed two-week hiatus, to as great an extent as possible, no social media allowed. Maybe the government could enforce this by making everyone wear oven mittens for two weeks. You wouldn’t be able to tweet outrage over government overreach because GNPSRS oven mittens.
Since this may sound unrealistic, let’s get back to supporting each other through some difficult times, especially our teachers, families and students. I really don’t want to think of a society that devolves into one that doesn’t have a solid, well-funded, morally-backed, publicly-supported public education system. I guess we could survive, but certainly not thrive. I picture that world as having a much greater gap between the haves and have nots; a world that becomes even more divided over mankind’s demons of sexism, racism and religious intolerance; a world run to benefit a few puppet masters. I think most folks would want to avoid that, and it’s generally thought that education is the best path around such a depressing scenario. As usual, Dale is right. Let’s not forget our teachers. Pay them more, let them teach and include them at the table for discussions. Giving teachers what they deserve will pay back 10-fold in our children getting the education they need.
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