Celebrating our Faculty on Teacher Appreciation Day

by Mike Davis, Ph.D.
Head of School

 

I didn’t want the day to pass without recognition of May 9 as National Teacher Appreciation Day.  In 1953, it was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who took the cause to Congress and persuaded lawmakers to set aside a day to recognize the work of our nation’s educators.  Are there any words that carry enough weight to match the gratitude that each of us has for a particularly influential teacher in our lives or in the lives of our children?

 

I have shared before the story of a great teacher who was a World War II veteran and who returned home from the brutal European Theater of Operations so that he could devote the rest of his own life to being a teacher.

 

When asked, “why,” the former soldier once replied, “Because as a teacher, especially if you are a good teacher, the lessons you impart live on in the lives of your students forever.”  That teacher was Lt. Col. Robert E. Simons, and he is buried not far from Colorado Academy at Fort Logan National Cemetery. He spent the rest of his life teaching high school English, Russian literature, and journalism to many lucky Colorado students.

What Simons learned during his time in the war is the same thing that teachers at Colorado Academy know. Good teaching does not happen by leading, but by setting an example; teaching is not an act of pouring in, but of planting, and as H.L. Mencken said, “Teaching is not simply to making his pupils think, but making them think right.  “Teaching,” said Aristotle “Is the highest form of understanding.” William Glasser went so far as to say, “Effective teaching may be the hardest job there is.”

 

Not just on this day, but throughout the remainder of the school year, I hope you’ll join me in thanking the teachers at Colorado Academy. For each of them, I can tell you that they are as devoted and as passionate as this soldier was about what they do. And our students, our kids, and our future are the better for it.