Teacher Appreciation Day

“to know how to read is to light a lamp in the mind, to release the soul from prison, to open a gate to the universe." --Pearl S. Buck, Pavilion of Women 

“Let woman out of the home, let man into it, should be the aim of education. The home needs man, and the world outside needs woman.” --Pearl S. Buck, Source?

Today is National Teacher Day, part of Nation Teacher Appreciation Week.  Do you have a teacher in your life that you admire?  Do you plan to show your appreciation.

Pearl Buck began her career as a teacher at Nanjing University in China, and as you can see from the quotations above, had clear ideas about the role of education in society.


I should also point out that I am aware my teachers would not be happy I do not have a source for the second quotation above.  They would say that I have posted and out of context quotation and attributed it based solely on a secondary source.  Yet it appears often enough in collections of Pearl Buck quotes, and is so appropriate, that I am including with apologies to my teachers.  Hopefully someone can tell me the original text it is taken from.

Mrs. Jonese on the day we made breakfast
and took pictures for VoiceThread.

Since it is Teacher Appreciation Day, I would be remiss in not thanking Jan Jonese, the Language Arts Teacher at Marlinton Middle School whose Curricular Enrichment Class I have been taking over, sort of, 2-3 days a week for our cultural exchange program, and Denise Sharp, whose students also join us in the class, and who works with the students from both classes that are not interested in the project.  Both women are great with the students, which is enormously helpful given that my teaching experience is almost entirely at the university undergraduate and graduate level.  I am actually teaching with Mrs. Jonese, and am grateful that her creativity and experience has come up with a way to get us through another thematic module in our outline in about half the time I had envisioned, but without compromising our pedagogic objectives.  On a personal note, I'd always suspected school teachers were under appreciated and under valued in comparison with their counterparts in higher education.  Now I know it to be the case. 

Many countries have a Teacher Appreciation Day, and in at least one state, Massachusetts, it is honored not today, but in September.  Here are some links to find out more. 

Teacher's Day Around the World
The History of Teacher Day
Join the Department of Education in Thanking Teachers
National Teacher Day from the National Education Association
Teacher Appreciation Info