Have You Thanked Your Child's Teacher Today?

Statement

Traveling throughout Southeast Idaho, I have been troubled by the lack of optimism I see in our teachers. I know what they do for the future of our state and for our young people and I am concerned. I have asked several teachers and administrators to send me stories about exemplary action on the part of teachers, but they are not good at, "tooting their own horn." I hope if I began this I will hear from teachers, administrators and parents about wonderful actions taken by teachers that I might share with you.

I am constantly amazed at the number of things we expect from this group in our society. We expect them to spend more time with our children than we, quite often, spend ourselves. We expect them to love and respect them. We expect them to watch for children who are hungry or abused and take appropriate action on their behalf. We expect them to prepare our future generations to be able to support a family and contribute to our communities. We expect our kids to be able to solve difficult problems and work things out for themselves and our teachers are the ones who teach them these skills.

Today, I want tell you of just one experience I observed from a teacher who is no longer in Idaho but who exemplified extraordinary creativity and imagination. It was St. Patrick's Day and she wanted to stimulate imaginative writing in her third grade classroom. She carved away at a potato until she had tiny footprints in relief on this potato. She then dipped it in green poster paint and began on the outside of one of the windows in her classroom. These tiny green footprints came up the outside of the window and down the inside, across several desks, up the isle between the desks to the drawer where she sometimes kept snacks or treats for her students, and disappeared into the drawer. She discussed this with the children and asked what they thought had happened during the night. She then practiced with them a few dozen words that they were less familiar with but which were very descriptive. Their assignment was to write a paper describing what they thought had happened in their classroom during the night and they were encouraged to use these less familiar descriptive words in their writing. She got wonderful, exciting stories from these small children, stimulated their imagination, gave them opportunities to solve a mystery and use new words they possibly were not familiar with.

I was impressed with her imagination and the time she took to help these students learn, solve a problem and exercise their imagination which are qualities we want our children to have. This teacher was Sharon Mullen who now lives in Virginia. I hope she will not be embarrassed for this story to be used in this way, but I think she is great.

I know that we have many teachers who are inspired to use exciting methods to teach their students and I hope some will share their stories or the stories of other teachers they know. We pay them almost nothing but they certainly deserve our great respect and admiration. If you have a child in school, please take an opportunity to thank his/her teacher for the great work he/she does.

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