Whew, wasn’t sure we were gonna make it there—a whole week of honoring our nation’s teachers; talk about exertion. And then Mother’s Day! I bet teacher-mothers currently feel enough gratitude to go a whole decade without being appreciated again.
Yes, now that our obligatory five business days of teacher appreciation is over, the general populace can move on to honoring other things for the rest of the year. Today, for example, is both International Nurses Day and Doce de Mayo. (It’s like Cinco de Mayo, but with a whole extra week to work out the kinks.*) And don’t forget today is also National Nutty Fudge Day—everyone likes fudge.
Appreciation weeks—or any Appreciation Interval of Time, really—might leave a void afterward, as life returns to the mean. But to help relive the glory of a good week for teaching, here’s a small sampling of some of the highlights from Teacher Appreciation Week:
Google reminded us all to thank a teacher with this lovely video about a would-be astronaut turned science teacher:
The Obama Administration, meanwhile, fresh off its National Teacher of the Year ceremony, invited 22 teachers to a White House social event to talk about policy and, for at least a brief moment, vegetables.
On Twitter, the Center for Teaching Quality ramped up its #TeachingIs campaign, timed to hit full effect during the week. The campaign aims to increase public understanding of what it takes to work in the teaching profession; the social-media effort accompanies several related posts by the organization’s bloggers.
Here at Education Week, the opinion bloggers got into the spirit as well. Teaching Toward Tomorrow’s Jennie Magiera did a five-part series on educators that inspire students. Stu Silberman, of the Public Engagement & Ed Reform blog, had a three-part series that allowed students to really go in-depth over their teacher appreciation.
And Education Week Teacher launched our One Day in Teaching project, combining the efforts of many of Education Week‘s departments, to create a compilation of what teachers’ days actually look like through photos. (We got hundreds of submissions, all of which you can see on Instagram by searching for #dayoftheteacher.)
If this all has you so excited that you’re already looking forward to next year’s Teacher Appreciation Week, you can’t go wrong looking on Pinterest for ideas, except in the sense that Pinterest is a black hole of time usage.
For now, though, teachers can return to the wonderful world of normal existence.
(Don’t worry, teachers—fudge faces some big problems, too.)
*Needed more tequila.
Image: A selection from “One Day in Teaching.” —brownbagteacher