I have always found a teaching career to be a gift.

How wonderful it would be to sculpt the minds of our youth while continuing to shape your own. I admire that deeply. Now I will admit, I was never too fond of the occupation in my earlier years. I tended to dwell on the homework and tests, but now I see it is more than that. It is easy to teach merely a subject, but to teach students academics and how to be a decent human being at the same time: that is the challenge— the goal!

There are many fallacies and flaws stitched into our world. At times, teachers are the only people students count on. Let’s face it: sometimes the classroom is more of a home to children than the four walls they return to.

However, due to recent events, it has been feared that schools have morphed into a sort of war zone. That is just the reality we live in. It is difficult to tell that to students- to yourself. But you can still produce change. You can revise our youth before the world alters them for you. Evil lives in good and good exists in evil like the teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that took a bullet sheltering students in his classroom. Scott Beigel taught a little more than geography that day. To be a teacher is more than teaching English or calculus or even geography. Once you realize that, it will turn your job into an aspiration.

What you are conducting with future generations is paramount work. Women are celebrated for their godly ability to birth a child. Teachers have the power to mold them into the children they are today. In a way, you are doing God’s work.

For centuries, the human race has carried a hunger for knowledge. Students create right answers for questions while teachers challenge us to ask the right questions.

This is a “thank you” for the years you have picked us up when we could not, the times you showed us the answers, and gave us the study guide to life’s test.

Keep teaching. Keep loving. Keep creating wonderful people.