Appreciating Teacher’s Work During American Education Week

It’s American Education Week and it has been a year turned on its head, when it comes to teaching kids.

Prescott South Elementary Kindergarten Teacher Natalie Beach said she feels parents have a better idea on getting kids to behave and getting work done. However, she said understanding how to tailor the learning experience for kids can still be a challenge for parents. Beach said hearing how she does that for someone’s child is the most impacting feedback.

“We say you’re doing a good job but what does a good job mean, and so what I think is the most valuable to any teacher is, ‘I appreciate how you helped my child do this specific thing or I really noticed how you communicate this way and that really makes a difference,” Beach said. “That specific feedback, so that a teacher knows that he or she is doing something that needs to be continued.”

Beach said the biggest change in her 15 years teaching is the move to meet each student at their comprehension level. She said schools were beginning to teach in different ways but that’s been expanded on.

“We’ve really moved a lot further in education now to meeting kids on their level, we’re not just teaching down the middle and hoping they get it,” Beach said. “We’re really teaching the kids who aren’t there yet, how to get there and we’re teaching the kids who’ve got it, how to get a little bit further.”

Beach said becoming a teacher is about finding the right age group someone wants to help and educate. She said it is not because of the reasons many people think.

“A lot of times, you hear people in school to become teachers or outside of the teaching world who say, ‘well, you only work from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM and you get Summers off, the hours should be incentive enough,” Beach said. “Those hours are just the minimum and most teachers work much beyond that, it’s not the hours, it’s not the money, it really is about the kids.”

Beach said she appreciates the work parents have done to support teachers this year. She said she knows it has been a difficult year for everyone.

“We’ve been teaching for years and years and years, but we’ve never taught like this before and parents have been parenting for years and years and years, but they’ve never parented like this before,” Beach said. “We’re all trying to figure this out together, so thank you for your patience and keep it up as things grow and change.”