Education update

An Education In For-Profit Education: Infographic

Teaching, the most important profession

At the very moment my daughter hopes to become a teacher, Detroit is talking about closing half its public schools. In Rhode Island, teachers are being laid off wholesale. California has issued thousands of pink slips. 

All over the world, people sacrifice to send their children to school. Afghan girls are threatened yet still walk to school; Chinese children are sent to schools in faraway cities by parents desperate to give them better lives; Kenyan students study by kerosene lamp in one-room schools built by grateful parents. 

Here, access to a free education is an essential part of the American dream. I was sent to kindergarten at 4 by my mother, a Swiss immigrant. She taught me to read when I was 3, worried that the school wouldn't admit me unless I was already literate. I went daily to a kind teacher who let me read advanced books in the corner. I remember her hair, her lips when her mouth moved, and her fingernails. Decades later, she remembers me, and says I told her stories. 

I believe it. Because teachers are often therapists, friends, mentors, coaches, sometimes providers of food and school supplies or holders of secrets. And in that way, they are some of the most important people in children's lives. 

And sometimes, despite all the disrespect that's out there, teachers are appreciated. Last week, I got an email from a Cambodian American student from San Bernardino who now teaches English in South Korea; she was writing to say thank you. 

My students, many of them first-generation immigrants, have brought me gifts and invited me to their weddings and New Year celebrations. I have gotten calls of thanks from their parents. And sometimes they have called me not by my name, but by the most reverent word they could summon: Teacher. 

I try to imagine my daughter in a classroom this fall, looking out at the faces of children who are thinking of numbers and letters and secrets. I remember the woman who taught me to form the alphabet, the man who taught me long division. I remember my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Wolf, playing Cat Stevens songs on the guitar. And I wonder about the children who may one day remember my daughter's teaching, and in what ways she may have changed their lives.