Teaching: The Thankless Job

This was a particularly rough week for me as a teacher.  I found myself feeling down about the lack of recognition we teacher recieve for the sacrafices we make everyday for our students.  In the media, government, and even within the public school system we are constently being told that we aren't measuring up.  We are being inendated with quotes about data in staff meetings and in the media.  If your numbers are not up then you are stampped with a low performance label and frowned upon.  As I reflected on this numbers game and how it makes teachers feel I started to think when do we as teachers every get recognized and appreciated for the things we do right.  I realized I was looking to the wrong people for that recognition.  My principal is not always going to have the time or enclination to do it.  The government is going to do it. The media certainly isn't going to do it becasue that doesn't make for a good story.  So I started on a path to find out how teachers





We are only human and we crave that gradification that a pat on the back give you.  What can we do when the conventional ways of recognition like awards at staff meetings, parental acts of gratitude, and high marks from administration on evaluations are missing?  Here is a list of sure fire ways to start to encourage a atmospher of apprciations and recognition in your school.


1. Recognize a Co-Worker each week

2. Toot your own horn

3. Use social media for good

4. Create a online teaching portfolio

5. Build it into your lesson plans
  have students write weekly letters to you about what they feel went well with your lessons, what they would like to see you do again, and what they learned from your instruction

6. Start a WOW
Wow! notebook -- a morale booster! When a staff member receives the notebook, they read the wonderful message that someone wrote for them. They, in turn, write a note to another staff member to encourage, give a boost, or to just say how much they are appreciated. At the bottom of the page they write, "Don't forget to pass it on....." Could work in the class, too...