BY AMANDA PARRISH MORGAN
It’s become a bit of a truism to point out that if a career has an “appreciation week” it’s a sign those employees are underpaid. After all–while I very much appreciated the anesthesiologist who administered the epidural I’d begun asking for the moment my water broke, I assumed my and others’ appreciation for him was conveyed monetarily. This week is Teacher Appreciation Week–a week I have mixed feelings about as both a parent of school-aged kids and a former high school English teacher.
On the one hand, I vividly remember the love parents put into hosting lunches and breakfasts at my first teaching job. I can remember the mother of a student in my AP Language and Composition class running the teacher raffle where I won (I never win raffles!) an awesome pair of earrings. Students had the chance to submit a brief note about a teacher who’d had a positive impact on their education and someone (I wish I knew who, now!) compiled these and delivered them to our mailboxes. I still have mine! I really did feel appreciated.
On the other hand–what would have really changed the sustainability of teaching, at least for me, was not something that even an impressive fleet of hard-working and efficient volunteer parents (or–let’s be honest, moms) could put together over the course of a single week in May. I wanted to maintain standards without fighting against the demand for inflated grades. I wanted to have enough time to meet with all the students one-on-one who wanted extra help. I wanted to refuse a clearly plagiarized assignment without assuming a lawyer was about to get involved. I wanted time to plan and think and learn and deepen my own intellectual and creative reservoirs without worrying I’d be behind on the ever-growing pile of paperwork for a revolving lineup of acronymed initiatives.
As a young teacher, I was lucky enough to spend four weeks of one summer writing. In a class of twelve other educators, I wrote, revised, discussed, and wrote some more. It was the best professional development I ever had and an important reminder that a good teacher of writing is one who is practicing the craft, putting words on the page, battling a shaky voice and fragile ego to read work-in-progress out loud or tearing up a bad draft and starting over.
That summer was more than fifteen years ago, but I think about it often. I can still remember where I sat each day, the smell of the classroom, the mannerisms of the instructor, and even the particular projects I first began drafting there.
It’s for this reason that I am thrilled to announce our K-12 educator scholarships. It’s beyond the scope of the Writers’ Workshop to make the kind of big changes I often wished for as a teacher and that I know my former colleagues who are still in the classroom need. But as a concrete means of demonstrating our appreciation for educators, we can make our workshops a little bit more accessible.
BY DEVON PIKE It’s so warm that I can’t remember what cold feels like when I start to pack the car and so I make mistakes, make myself late. I let the dog distract me. I consider planting the bulbs in the planters, but I get that one right, leave
BY SAMANTHA KELLER The short answer: If you’re going to publish at any time in the future, you need to start making connections and educating yourself about the industry now. But here’s the long answer: This April, my novel, The Light Remains, will be published through a hybrid press in
