Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/celebrating-teachers-and-their-work/5010056/
The more I work with teachers in early childhood programs, the deeper my gratitude grows for their efforts to stick with this difficult work. Most spend many unpaid hours in and out of their classrooms organizing, planning, getting further training so as to provide the best quality care and education they can. They often do this while continually helping to train new staff, working second jobs to make ends meet, going without health insurance, driving an unreliable car, and postponing their own parenting to avoid further economic stress.The work and skill of child care teachers is generally invisible in our society. Even parents who see them every day take teachers' efforts for granted, often adding insult to injury by requesting that they baby-sit for their children on the weekends. The handful of parents who do acknowledge respect and gratitude to their child care providers are, in the words of Lilian Katz, "transients" - by the time they understand the issues involved in providing quality care, their children move on to school and they lose sight or interest in advocating for the early childhood profession. Can we really feel like celebrating under all these conditions?
The temptation is ...