What an inspiring story! We all love you Bob because you are such a dynamo! So talented and funny and brilliant! You are the quintessential teacher and thank god for you! You were lucky and talented so you got the attention to inspire you! I only had a couple of teachers who believed in me but that was enough! Teachers should be paid 3 times what they are paid but the pay is not what makes a good teacher. It’s the nobility and kindness. I really do believe you love your students! What a great man!
A single caring consistent adult is the simplest, most effective factor in a child’s resilience and success. It’s not rocket science. But it can produce rocket scientists.
Your tribute to Alice Camp warms my heart. I'm a retired teacher, and never got thanked much for all my efforts - from kids, parents or administrators. Teachers are always trying to fill others with confidence, curiosity and motivate them - but nobody fills them up. This
Thank you Paula B. I taught primary (elementary) mainstream as well as special education both in Australia and CA. CA is a brutal place to teach. Teachers literally have to teach "by the book" (textbook). The needs of the children are second to the school districts.
As a long time teacher I can attest to the fact that a heartfelt thank you note from a student at the close of a school year is the best gift imaginable -- makes it all worthwhile. Just yesterday I go a note from a student letting me know what a profound impact my class had upon her. I thought I had been missing the mark with her all year. That’s one for the annals of “you just never know.” I cried on the patio as I read it ...
Oh, this is so true. Many times a parent would tell me how my class and my teaching was all her child ever talked about, and I would think, "Really? I would NEVER have known that they even liked being in my class at all!" You just never know :-).
Yes, years ago my students presented me a Christmas tree ornament signed by the entire class. Needless to say, every December I look forward to unwrapping it and hanging it from the tree.
I still have a folder with such notes from decades ago. Once in awhile I read them. Some still make me laugh, others tug at my heart. I'm glad to have them.
So true. Those handwritten and drawn cards given to me at the end of the year and the grateful comments of a parent at a conference meant the world to me.
We should honor teachers, providing them with decent working conditions and wages. From first grade to university. A country that does not recognize the tremendous investment they represent for its own benefit is bound to go down the drain morally, politically, and economically after two or three generations (sadly, this came true in European countries as well as in the U.S.). They, not Wall Street, are our collective access to freedom, peace, and prosperity.
This seems to run all though our education system. Living near one of our "great "universities, I am aware that earning a doctorate in something less than directly related to a high income-producing profession can lead to adjunct status with paltry renumeration. I was thrilling to see those adjuncts organize.
Excellent! Call me a commie, but I remember being very impressed when I learned that in the USSR, salaries for everyone were about the same. A doctor for instance, made a bit more than the orderly, but the disparity was nothing like the chasms we see currently in the west. The people who actually contribute most to our society like farmers, truck drivers, cleaners, teachers, and food service workers are often the lowest paid - while those who gamble with our hard-earned money make fortunes. We are truly sick in the way we have allowed money to rule.
Teaching is great, and great teachers are great. Under-funded schools, and the public education funding drain of private school vouchers should be rectified immediately. Private schools should be eliminated. Funding should come from the General Fund, not from property taxes or anything else tied to the local economy. One of our most significant shared values should be pride in the high and homogeneous quality of public education at every school.
For me, it was Gail Lathrop. She was the epitome of boundless energy, enthusiasm and encouragement - an amazing 7th grade English teacher who saw in me something I certainly didn’t see in myself. She died of cancer years ago - but I remember her with nothing less than awe and appreciation. Teaching determines the future more than any other profession - why this isn’t just accepted as common sense is mind boggling.
Too bad that "common sense" in the USA consists of frantically trying, throughout one's lifetime, to amass enough money to avoid living in poverty as a retiree.
Not dissimilar to here in the UK - and as the retirement age keeps rising, the frantic struggle lasts longer. Not to mention 12 year olds will be taught by teachers older than their grandparents. And you can imagine how much they have in common.
Thank you for reminding us of how much we owe our former (and current) teachers. When people claim to be "self-made" I know there was someone--often a teacher--who believed in them and helped them to believe in themselves. None of us make it alone.
I taught university for two years in Sierra Leone, West Africa. About a year after I came back from Sierra Leone, I got a thank-you letter from one of my students there. It really moved me, especially as the cost of the air letter he sent me would have bought him a day's food.
I realized I’d not thanked my former teachers. Of the three most influential professors in my first year at university, I could track down only one. I wrote him, and we stayed in touch for some time. He even came up to Canada, where I now teach, for a Leonard Cohen Conference at which I joined him. Only now, as I am about to retire from teaching university, do I realize fully how much such thank-you letters mean.
I'm sure you've received many such letters, Dr. Reich, and well-deserved ones;; you strike me as an outstanding teacher (if you can make someone with dyscalculia like me understand economics, you've got to be amazing in class). Your readers owe Alice Camp a big thank-you for empowering you.
Meanwhile, we are driving our best teachers out of the profession. I recently saw a letter from a teacher in Texas who is quitting; she can no longer bear having to teach her terrified third-graders what to do in case of a school shooter.
How wonderful of you to remember Mrs. Camp and other teachers who impacted your life! They obviously did great things for you because you are a very gifted writer. Thanks for sharing..
How wonderful. I had a teacher in 6th grade who let me take care of the class library. Then I had two great junior and senior high librarians and I became a librarian working in academic libraries for 42 years. I feel the same way about the many students I got to know and help. Teachers are underpaid and under appreciated!
sigh Professor thank you. As is often the case when I read your newsletters, I am jealous. Not jealous in the sense that I want you not to have what you have but jealous in the sense that I want what you have and had. I am not as smart as you, although I am smarter than most, My illness, both physical and mental, has cost me more than you, or at least, I have not been able to overcome the effects of my illness. I will never have as long and productive career as you, even if all my symptoms disappeared today. I do not know how to make myself or the world better. #Ithurtsmyheart. I should go back to sleep. perhaps things will look better in the morning.
Your candor and your self awareness make for meaningful communication on this techie faceless format, Fred. I always appreciate hearing from a real person.
Fred Friedman - Every human had goodness and qualities that they may not be aware of or have not had a chance to shine. You too have much to offer, as is clear from your writing; empathy, understanding, courage, honesty. May you feel better in the morning.
You can thank Mrs. Camp and all the other wonderful teachers you never thanked by supporting teachers any way you can. Write about their value and how each one inspired you and helped you become the person you are today. Then, write about them again, again, and again….
Agree fully, although I did not appreciative my teachers very much when I was a child, now that I have a child I go out of my way to thank them for their work. I note that - like every profession - there are good, acceptable and crappy ones and wish we had a way to better rank them so that there was a clearly defined merit system and this was used to ensure the good ones get paid better.
Robert - Would love for you to propose how this could be done...have any great ideas?
Not Robert here, but i do have a few suggestions. Not only should the US pay teachers much more, they should also make getting into Education and teaching more competitive to raise the status of teaching. In some Scandinavian countries, teaching is a high-status occupation. Only the best students get into Education--getting in is very competitive--and teaching is highly paid. The US should follow their lead.
I teach at a university in Canada (I'm a dual US/Canadian citizen who was educated through the BA in the US) which has a very high employment rate for graduating teachers because we have a 5-year combined BS(or BA or BMgt or BArts)/BEd program. Students are not accepted into the Education program until they have finished two years of undergraduate courses; only those with the highest GPAs in their major are accepted. Students in the program graduate with a degree in a teaching subject and a degree in Education as well as experience in teaching, so they have more to offer the schools that hire them--and they make more money than students who have only a degree in Education. Establishing programs like this at more universities would raise the quality, status, and salary of teachers.
Passing sensible gun control laws is also important. Teachers have enough to deal with without having to teach their students how to (hopefully) survive a school shooting. I just read a letter from a teacher in Texas who is leaving the field because she can no longer bear teaching terrified little children how to play dead by covering themselves with another student's blood. How can we expect the best and brightest to do this--and for less than they'd make at McDonalds (she was making $17/hr)?
The future depends on the teachers. If the US is to remain a democracy, it must have better teachers--better trained and better paid--teaching in a safe setting. It is so obvious that many of the extreme right-wing who are voting for people like Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Madison Cawthorn and pushing the US towards an authoritarian theocractic dictatorship, have either never had a Civics course or paid no attention to it and have no idea how the US government works--just look at those who claim the US is not and never was intended to be a democracy because it is a republic. If the US is to survive, it needs the best teachers and it needs to pay and protect them accordingly.
There are "good, acceptable and crappy" everythings everywhere. I am loathe to rank teachers. I am a retired public school teacher. My career was rich with wonderful relationships catalyzing and accompanying children on their journeys to, as Prof. Reich describes so delightfully, make the space for them/him to become more themselves/himself. And my career was fraught with fending off administrators that had prescribed and limited ideas of how children learn and think. They had lost their capacity for curiosity and creativity so they thought children shouldn't be allowed to either. Skyrocketing teacher pay commensurate with other professions is necessary. Trusting teachers to explore with the children is fundamental to meaningful school experiences.
I would kindly say, when doctors are ranked, or lawyers are ranked, then teachers should be ranked. Honestly ranking teachers and making them meet some additional "standard" is not the answer.
I taught in a merit system for 3 years. What it really was, was the "politically expedient" system. The Dept. Chair made sure the highest evaluations, and thus the biggest raises, went to the teachers with the most political clout. As a temporary hire, I had none. It didn't matter how many awards my students won, my evaluations were always right down the middle of the road. No bonus pay for me!
It was long ago, but I use my experience with a merit system to show perhaps its biggest inherent flaw: people. Unions are criticized for protecting the borderline incompetent, and certainly there is truth to the criticism. But for merit pay to work, we also need good and qualified administrators. Competence, unfortunately like beauty, is too often in the eye of the beholder. I have worked for 33 years in a unionized system and greatly prefer it to the 3 years in a "right to work" state with merit pay, though I'd like to think I'd have been getting merit pay the last 2-3 decades, if we had it here. With a union I at least know what to expect.
What an inspiring story! We all love you Bob because you are such a dynamo! So talented and funny and brilliant! You are the quintessential teacher and thank god for you! You were lucky and talented so you got the attention to inspire you! I only had a couple of teachers who believed in me but that was enough! Teachers should be paid 3 times what they are paid but the pay is not what makes a good teacher. It’s the nobility and kindness. I really do believe you love your students! What a great man!
Don't forget his artwork!
Oh yes! Love the cartoons!
Yes, a fine teacher and I have not had the pleasure of taking one of Dr. Reich's official classes. I learn a lot just from these daily comments.
A single caring consistent adult is the simplest, most effective factor in a child’s resilience and success. It’s not rocket science. But it can produce rocket scientists.
Well said. Consistency is key. A consistently open and positive presence can work miracles.
So true and often it is a teacher
Yes, for me it was my grandparents. I don't know where I'd be without them.
Your tribute to Alice Camp warms my heart. I'm a retired teacher, and never got thanked much for all my efforts - from kids, parents or administrators. Teachers are always trying to fill others with confidence, curiosity and motivate them - but nobody fills them up. This
did!
I’m not your student, Virginia, but I thank you. What did you teach?
Thank you Paula B. I taught primary (elementary) mainstream as well as special education both in Australia and CA. CA is a brutal place to teach. Teachers literally have to teach "by the book" (textbook). The needs of the children are second to the school districts.
By CA you mean Canada, right? I’m surprised. I would have thought they’d be more enlightened. What’s going on there?
As a long time teacher I can attest to the fact that a heartfelt thank you note from a student at the close of a school year is the best gift imaginable -- makes it all worthwhile. Just yesterday I go a note from a student letting me know what a profound impact my class had upon her. I thought I had been missing the mark with her all year. That’s one for the annals of “you just never know.” I cried on the patio as I read it ...
Oh, this is so true. Many times a parent would tell me how my class and my teaching was all her child ever talked about, and I would think, "Really? I would NEVER have known that they even liked being in my class at all!" You just never know :-).
Yes, years ago my students presented me a Christmas tree ornament signed by the entire class. Needless to say, every December I look forward to unwrapping it and hanging it from the tree.
That is so cool!
I still have a folder with such notes from decades ago. Once in awhile I read them. Some still make me laugh, others tug at my heart. I'm glad to have them.
So true. Those handwritten and drawn cards given to me at the end of the year and the grateful comments of a parent at a conference meant the world to me.
We should honor teachers, providing them with decent working conditions and wages. From first grade to university. A country that does not recognize the tremendous investment they represent for its own benefit is bound to go down the drain morally, politically, and economically after two or three generations (sadly, this came true in European countries as well as in the U.S.). They, not Wall Street, are our collective access to freedom, peace, and prosperity.
This seems to run all though our education system. Living near one of our "great "universities, I am aware that earning a doctorate in something less than directly related to a high income-producing profession can lead to adjunct status with paltry renumeration. I was thrilling to see those adjuncts organize.
Phillipe ; well said!
Excellent! Call me a commie, but I remember being very impressed when I learned that in the USSR, salaries for everyone were about the same. A doctor for instance, made a bit more than the orderly, but the disparity was nothing like the chasms we see currently in the west. The people who actually contribute most to our society like farmers, truck drivers, cleaners, teachers, and food service workers are often the lowest paid - while those who gamble with our hard-earned money make fortunes. We are truly sick in the way we have allowed money to rule.
Agreed!
Teaching is great, and great teachers are great. Under-funded schools, and the public education funding drain of private school vouchers should be rectified immediately. Private schools should be eliminated. Funding should come from the General Fund, not from property taxes or anything else tied to the local economy. One of our most significant shared values should be pride in the high and homogeneous quality of public education at every school.
For me, it was Gail Lathrop. She was the epitome of boundless energy, enthusiasm and encouragement - an amazing 7th grade English teacher who saw in me something I certainly didn’t see in myself. She died of cancer years ago - but I remember her with nothing less than awe and appreciation. Teaching determines the future more than any other profession - why this isn’t just accepted as common sense is mind boggling.
Too bad that "common sense" in the USA consists of frantically trying, throughout one's lifetime, to amass enough money to avoid living in poverty as a retiree.
Not dissimilar to here in the UK - and as the retirement age keeps rising, the frantic struggle lasts longer. Not to mention 12 year olds will be taught by teachers older than their grandparents. And you can imagine how much they have in common.
Thank you for reminding us of how much we owe our former (and current) teachers. When people claim to be "self-made" I know there was someone--often a teacher--who believed in them and helped them to believe in themselves. None of us make it alone.
I taught university for two years in Sierra Leone, West Africa. About a year after I came back from Sierra Leone, I got a thank-you letter from one of my students there. It really moved me, especially as the cost of the air letter he sent me would have bought him a day's food.
I realized I’d not thanked my former teachers. Of the three most influential professors in my first year at university, I could track down only one. I wrote him, and we stayed in touch for some time. He even came up to Canada, where I now teach, for a Leonard Cohen Conference at which I joined him. Only now, as I am about to retire from teaching university, do I realize fully how much such thank-you letters mean.
I'm sure you've received many such letters, Dr. Reich, and well-deserved ones;; you strike me as an outstanding teacher (if you can make someone with dyscalculia like me understand economics, you've got to be amazing in class). Your readers owe Alice Camp a big thank-you for empowering you.
Meanwhile, we are driving our best teachers out of the profession. I recently saw a letter from a teacher in Texas who is quitting; she can no longer bear having to teach her terrified third-graders what to do in case of a school shooter.
I wish all teachers could read this.
How wonderful of you to remember Mrs. Camp and other teachers who impacted your life! They obviously did great things for you because you are a very gifted writer. Thanks for sharing..
How wonderful. I had a teacher in 6th grade who let me take care of the class library. Then I had two great junior and senior high librarians and I became a librarian working in academic libraries for 42 years. I feel the same way about the many students I got to know and help. Teachers are underpaid and under appreciated!
Robert Reich ; Your students are lucky.
sigh Professor thank you. As is often the case when I read your newsletters, I am jealous. Not jealous in the sense that I want you not to have what you have but jealous in the sense that I want what you have and had. I am not as smart as you, although I am smarter than most, My illness, both physical and mental, has cost me more than you, or at least, I have not been able to overcome the effects of my illness. I will never have as long and productive career as you, even if all my symptoms disappeared today. I do not know how to make myself or the world better. #Ithurtsmyheart. I should go back to sleep. perhaps things will look better in the morning.
Cheer up Fred Friedman! (You are no less present than any of us; it is nice to spend time with you here!)
Kind of you to say. Rishi
I'm sorry you have suffered so much, and I hope you have people in your life who support and value you. I hope things do look better in the morning.
@Fred. Living with an illness requires courage and heart. I salute you!
Benjamin. Kind of you to say. However, I have no choice.
Your candor and your self awareness make for meaningful communication on this techie faceless format, Fred. I always appreciate hearing from a real person.
Kind of you to say, Donna
Don't go back to sleep. You do better than you think. Reach for the things you love.
Fred Friedman - Every human had goodness and qualities that they may not be aware of or have not had a chance to shine. You too have much to offer, as is clear from your writing; empathy, understanding, courage, honesty. May you feel better in the morning.
kind of you to say, Michael
😀🙏
We love you, Fred! That should count for something.
Kind of you to say. I do wonder, what you mean, when you say that you "love" me., Paula
I find you endearing, I’m glad you’re here, and I care what happens to you.
kind of you to say. Thanks
You can thank Mrs. Camp and all the other wonderful teachers you never thanked by supporting teachers any way you can. Write about their value and how each one inspired you and helped you become the person you are today. Then, write about them again, again, and again….
Agree fully, although I did not appreciative my teachers very much when I was a child, now that I have a child I go out of my way to thank them for their work. I note that - like every profession - there are good, acceptable and crappy ones and wish we had a way to better rank them so that there was a clearly defined merit system and this was used to ensure the good ones get paid better.
Robert - Would love for you to propose how this could be done...have any great ideas?
Not Robert here, but i do have a few suggestions. Not only should the US pay teachers much more, they should also make getting into Education and teaching more competitive to raise the status of teaching. In some Scandinavian countries, teaching is a high-status occupation. Only the best students get into Education--getting in is very competitive--and teaching is highly paid. The US should follow their lead.
I teach at a university in Canada (I'm a dual US/Canadian citizen who was educated through the BA in the US) which has a very high employment rate for graduating teachers because we have a 5-year combined BS(or BA or BMgt or BArts)/BEd program. Students are not accepted into the Education program until they have finished two years of undergraduate courses; only those with the highest GPAs in their major are accepted. Students in the program graduate with a degree in a teaching subject and a degree in Education as well as experience in teaching, so they have more to offer the schools that hire them--and they make more money than students who have only a degree in Education. Establishing programs like this at more universities would raise the quality, status, and salary of teachers.
Passing sensible gun control laws is also important. Teachers have enough to deal with without having to teach their students how to (hopefully) survive a school shooting. I just read a letter from a teacher in Texas who is leaving the field because she can no longer bear teaching terrified little children how to play dead by covering themselves with another student's blood. How can we expect the best and brightest to do this--and for less than they'd make at McDonalds (she was making $17/hr)?
The future depends on the teachers. If the US is to remain a democracy, it must have better teachers--better trained and better paid--teaching in a safe setting. It is so obvious that many of the extreme right-wing who are voting for people like Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Madison Cawthorn and pushing the US towards an authoritarian theocractic dictatorship, have either never had a Civics course or paid no attention to it and have no idea how the US government works--just look at those who claim the US is not and never was intended to be a democracy because it is a republic. If the US is to survive, it needs the best teachers and it needs to pay and protect them accordingly.
There are "good, acceptable and crappy" everythings everywhere. I am loathe to rank teachers. I am a retired public school teacher. My career was rich with wonderful relationships catalyzing and accompanying children on their journeys to, as Prof. Reich describes so delightfully, make the space for them/him to become more themselves/himself. And my career was fraught with fending off administrators that had prescribed and limited ideas of how children learn and think. They had lost their capacity for curiosity and creativity so they thought children shouldn't be allowed to either. Skyrocketing teacher pay commensurate with other professions is necessary. Trusting teachers to explore with the children is fundamental to meaningful school experiences.
I would kindly say, when doctors are ranked, or lawyers are ranked, then teachers should be ranked. Honestly ranking teachers and making them meet some additional "standard" is not the answer.
I taught in a merit system for 3 years. What it really was, was the "politically expedient" system. The Dept. Chair made sure the highest evaluations, and thus the biggest raises, went to the teachers with the most political clout. As a temporary hire, I had none. It didn't matter how many awards my students won, my evaluations were always right down the middle of the road. No bonus pay for me!
Oh, goodness, Sue! Thanks so much for telling me. I am sorry that happened to you.
Donna
It was long ago, but I use my experience with a merit system to show perhaps its biggest inherent flaw: people. Unions are criticized for protecting the borderline incompetent, and certainly there is truth to the criticism. But for merit pay to work, we also need good and qualified administrators. Competence, unfortunately like beauty, is too often in the eye of the beholder. I have worked for 33 years in a unionized system and greatly prefer it to the 3 years in a "right to work" state with merit pay, though I'd like to think I'd have been getting merit pay the last 2-3 decades, if we had it here. With a union I at least know what to expect.
I am sticking with the union.