Hello, friends and happy Mother’s Day to those who celebrate!
Another busy week which will lead to other busy weeks this month. I feel spread so thin that you can see right through me!
Welcome to the 172nd installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and appreciation. If you’re a reader who subscribes via Substack, my website, or Patreon, your encouragement helps motivate me. I’m not breaking any records but I’m thankful to have any audience.
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Another week with very little writing. I finished the synopsis for Project: Amusement Park and that’s about it in terms of physically sitting to write. I thought a lot about stories and books that I think I’m discovering within my head. Right now it’s just energy I need to actually do some of them. First, though, trying to place Project: Amusement Park and revising Four Moons.
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This past week was Teacher Appreciation Week, which means that people pretended to care a little bit about teachers. Being a teacher myself, if I had any more appreciation then I might feel noticed. As it stands after this week, being invisible can have its benefits. They can’t see you crying.
I have not held much back in my feelings about teaching in these current times. It’s been rough, to say the least. A few years ago, people began talking about Teacher Appreciation Week even though I’ve heard of it for many years. The school I work at actually attempted in a minute way (very much like a corporation that doesn’t really feel it but knows it must give something to its employees) to acknowledge it. Teachers were given small plastic bags of self-care goodies.
Except that the “goodies” were freebies from the job fair the school had held a week or two before for students. They added a few small things to it but, basically, that was the thought. It’s nice to be “noticed”…or something. I believe that week they also had a local Mexican restaurant cater lunch for us. The same happened last year, too. Taco Tuesday was fun.
This year, there were no tacos. That should be on a tee shirt. Not that I needed the tacos. But this year, like last year, we had a day when the kids left at 11 AM but teachers had to stay. In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, they told us we could leave school even earlier on Friday. Instead of the normal 2:45 we leave on Fridays, they were going to release us at…2 PM.
Well, thought I, maybe they’ll have a nicely catered lunch.
RON HOWARD (NARRATOR): They didn’t.
I think there were coffee and donuts in the morning when the day started, but unless you could get someone to cover your class or you felt like traipsing to the cafeteria, that was basically nothing. I didn’t partake because it would’ve made me feel ill.
I didn’t even get a single note from a single student this year.
Please do not cry for me because that is not what this is about. What this is about is these made-up appreciation days (or weeks) that are foolish because they’re never enough. They can’t be. We have these days for people we take for granted. Mother’s Day is going to make up for the other 364 days when Mom busts her ass to work for free for you? Fuck no! Father’s Day? Please. Teacher Appreciation Day/Week? Look, if you want to show appreciation, fix shit.
Mothers and fathers would be better appreciated if society made things easier for them to raise their kids with incomes where they can provide for the children and themselves. Teachers would be better appreciated without so many goddamn initiatives, PD days, and parents actually parenting their children. If the kids leave at 11, send the teachers home at 11:15 with a job well done.
Instead, we give platitudes and make teachers who give up free time sound like heroes while inadvertently make those of us who don’t work for free feel like failures. Instead, there are parents who believe that teachers are the ones who should instill structure, care, guidance, and model behavior for their children. And woe unto the teacher who doesn’t see their precious little prince/princess as anything other than the perfect genius that they are.
Right now you have tech companies pushing AI in classrooms to lighten the workload on teachers, or so they say. And some teachers buy into it. Meanwhile, you have the first robot—excuse me, the First “Lady”—bringing out robots who can replace teachers. It’s almost as though feeding all these assignments to AI is actually training it to make teaching a non-licensed babysitting job that anyone can get, especially those who will follow blindly and serve the State.
Show teachers appreciation by backing the fuck off with your tech and allow us to do our jobs. (“Don’t be so proud of this technological terror you’ve created. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force,” said the robot authoritarian—and he was right!). Back the fuck off with standardized tests that do nothing except make kids anxious and punish under-funded districts. Back the fuck off with ALICE training and instead get weapons out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.
Show teachers appreciation by giving them a salary that will allow them to care for themselves, their families, and still have a little left over to have a little bit of fun. Show teachers appreciation by ensuring everyone has a livable wage to do all that so parents can be there for their children and curtail many of the societal issues that plague modern education. Stop giving public school funds to charter schools and private schools. There’s barely enough to help the district schools. If the school is underperforming, don’t penalize it, invest in it and help it grow stronger.
This is all fairy tale talk, though. Will never haver happen. Could never happen. It doesn’t happen for anyone else and surely won’t happen for teachers. Instead, we’ll be fooled into buying cards and gift certificates and spreading ridiculous quotes and allowing weeklong dress down days to show appreciation.
For me, my immediate supervisor show more appreciation than anyone else in our district did when he came and sat with me and my immediate colleagues and just hung out. We all laughed, bitched and moaned, and ended an otherwise busy week with something that really helped: appreciation.
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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