This week is “Teacher Appreciation Week.” Should we mark the occasion? How? Why?

Teaching is still “women’s work” — 85 percent of K–12 teachers are female. Teaching is taxing work that requires skill and knowledge, the ability to think quickly on one’s feet and be caring. Managing learning for a room of thirty (or more) people is the preeminent form of multi-tasking.

Yet teaching’s difficulty and value are inadequately recognized by our society (as is parenting). Few schools give teachers the resources and support they need to do their jobs well, one of which is the opportunity to work with colleagues, students and parents as partners, learning from and with them. And because of the linkage between standardized testing and teachers’ evaluations, teachers’ professional judgment has been circumscribed, teaching’s nurturing functions undercut; frightened themselves, local school officials increasingly demand subservience from teachers. A climate of fear exists in many schools.