Giving teachers, and those who help them, their due

OPINION:

When you think about the definition of a teacher, we have traditionally focused on those individuals that have gone through the proper training and education to be certified to teach.

This week is Teacher Appreciation week, and in 2021 due to the global pandemic, the definition of who is a teacher has changed. It now includes stay-at-home parents, grandparents, aunties, and uncles who have stepped in to help our teachers who were unable to work for many months because of stringent and often confusing polices implemented by local leaders. 

America’s teachers are critically important to the development of our children and the future of this nation. In many ways they help shape young impressionable minds by their example in the classrooms. Teachers must be empathetic, patient, well versed, kind, tolerant and most of all neutral. 

With critical race theory and political agendas being inserted into the classrooms, we should go out of our way to really appreciate those teachers who get it right. That means understanding that their role is to not indoctrinate, or push a liberal ideology, but just teach the facts in an objective way so children can develop critical thinking skills to make up their own minds as they matriculate through school. 

Because of COVID-19, we have seen so many teachers displaced from the classroom, even as many of them want nothing but to return and teach their students. Teachers know the data and the science say children are safe to be in the classroom around other students and can do so being only three feet apart. 

Unfortunately for students, parents and teachers, the powerful American Federation of Teachers is playing politics and preventing teachers from being able to do their jobs and live out their passions at a time when students need it the most. It was reported that AFT’s efforts to lobby the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) impacted the agency’s school reopening guidance. This means there was political interference in what were supposed to be scientific guidelines. 

Children are suffering in this pandemic because they are isolated, depressed, stuck behind a screen and missing the human connection they need to develop. Sadly, poorer Black and Hispanic children and their families are hit particularly hard the longer our public school doors are closed. Parents have had to step in over the past year and learn how to be teachers while having a renewed appreciation for those who teach as a profession.  

Unemployed parents — single parents especially — who are home 24/7 have focused the majority of their time trying to make sure their children are learning. Democratic resistance to re-opening our local economies and our schools because of harsh mandates and restrictive regulations keeps parents from fully re-entering the workforce.

This burden on parents can’t be overlooked and their contribution to supplement the work of traditional teachers is worthy of praise. 

I can still remember all my elementary school teachers by name, and I am who I am today in part because of their investment in me. Additionally, I have a new sense of appreciation for my hard-working single mom, who relied on my grandparents to help raise me while she worked to keep a roof over my head. Had it not been for the three of them helping me throughout my entire education journey, I would not be writing this op-ed today to say thank you. 

Thank you to all the traditional teachers and all the new teachers we have because of this pandemic. Hopefully, more people will consider teaching full-time because it is a noble profession. To everyone that is teaching right now, we can only hope that sooner rather than later, we can follow the data and science and re-open our schools to full-time, in-person learning. 

• Paris Dennard is the national spokesperson and director of Black Media Affairs for the Republican National Committee (RNC). Follow him on Twitter: @PARISDENNARD.