Teachers anxiously waited to return to school buildings in anticipation and uncertainity of what lay ahead when we did return. Though we could go on all day about the learning benefits of in person teaching, it was the things our schools provide above and beyond the learning that we missed and are thankful to have back.

There’s a buzz in the school halls you can feel and experience that you just couldn’t get through an online experience. That’s what we missed. We missed seeing the kids and staff dress up for homecoming week, posing in the halls for pictures. We missed the energy that comes with the excitement of an upcoming playoff game as the school becomes one to cheer on their school team. We missed the decor of the halls changing to represent the seasons and holidays and the class competition of who can decorate their door the best.

We missed the sense of community as flyers filled the hallways for this organization and that organization’s latest community service project to give back and provide for the local community. We missed seeing the kids do their thing outside of the classroom whether that’s on a ball field, on a stage, in the choir or the band.

As teachers, we miss the high fives and fist bumps students gave their teachers of past and present as they passed them in the hall. We missed the student that was no longer ours but we’d always be one of their #1s so they stop in periodically just to make sure all the new students were treating us the way we deserved.

We missed the fundraising events of this club taking on this club in a friendly kickball game or the faculty ending the day in a friendly game of flag football. We missed the sense of camaraderie chatting in the halls after the bell rang when we too should have been class or after school at a school or holiday gathering. Whether it was the relationships between students and staff or staff amongst ourselves there’s a sense of family in those buildings that we missed.

We do more than take these kids into our buidings and into our classrooms; we take them into our hearts. We watch them struggle, and we watch them grow. Though sometimes they might think we’re their biggest enemies because we want to push them to their potential, more times than not, later they see us as their biggest cheerleaders.

While the world bickers and argues over how to do school in a covid world and the state of the current educational crisis and how to fix it, we just show up. We show up for the students and we show up for each other.

Though this year has been hard in ways we anticipated and ways we didn’t, we’re thankful for each other and this life of the educator because though it is hard, it is also where we too find family and a sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves.

Don’t forget to thank an educator during this season of gratitude  for what they give to all of our children.