6. Teachers are irreplaceable.
Over this past year, as COVID upended all our daily lives, one of the roles many of us were forced to take on was the role of educator. For those of us with young children, we actually became our kids’ school teachers—not in a hyperbolic way, but in a sitting next to them and going through their school work with them every single day way. All parents of young kids had to engage in home-schooling and distance learning, which meant we were finally exposed first-hand to what their teachers see in them every day, including their flashes of brilliance and their moments of craziness, their bursts of creativity and their inability to sit still, their hunger for learning and their moments of exhaustion. One of my take-aways from this experience is that our children’s teachers are true heroes. They are under-paid, under-appreciated, and under-valued. And we must do better to honor our teachers. In Judaism, teaching is one of the most important jobs anyone can do. Learning is one of our central values. The Talmud says you must acquire for yourself a teacher and a friend (Pirkei Avot 1:6). I feel blessed that my children have so many wonderful teachers. So, as I go into my parent-teacher conferences today, I am going to take a moment to truly appreciate my kids’ teachers, to thank them appropriately and to let them know how much I value them. Teachers are truly irreplaceable.