Our Nation’s Teachers: Appreciated in Name, Dishonored in Practice

Earlier this month, the United States celebrated Teacher Appreciation Week, the one week during the year when a Starbucks discount is supposed to stand in for respect. This week is often filled with corporations praising teacher sacrifice, but the Department of Education had a different idea.

Across its social media, the DoE shared images of Ms. Fowl, Ms. Hoover, Mrs. Puff, Miss Nelson, and Ms. Frizzle, fictional teachers who are often well-meaning but marred by burnout, incompetence, eccentricity, and paranoia. If they truly wanted to honor teachers, they could have chosen Ms. Keane from the PowerPuff Girls, Mr. Ratburn from Arthur, or Miss Grotke from Recess — teachers depicted as competent, caring, and respected. But they didn’t. The selection offered plausible deniability. The characters are beloved enough to pass as celebration, but flawed enough to communicate contempt. The White House couldn’t have made its disregard for educators plainer if it tried.

And it did try.

The following week, the Department of Education celebrated National Charter Schools Week, and the posts looked strikingly different. Images of children reaching for the stars, families showing care for one another, and teachers as guides to smiling children provided a foil to the broken teachers depicted the week before. This was the visual language of aspiration following a week filled with the visual language of disorder. The malady was public schools and the teachers therein. The cure? Charter schools. Same administration, different week, and an unmistakable message about which version of education this country should want.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has made her disregard for teachers a feature of her tenure. At the beginning of May, the Department of Education released its final rule redefining which graduate degrees qualify as “professional” for federal student loan purposes. Effective July 1, students in eleven designated fields — medicine, law, dentistry, and others — may borrow at higher federal levels. Students pursuing degrees in education, health, and social work will not. On the surface, the rule just limits borrowing, but beneath it lies a message about which professions this country considers worth investing in. It sends a message that what teachers do is not specialized, not significant enough to be funded, not a profession.

To be sure, the deprofessionalization of education is not new. For decades, policies have systematically stripped teachers of their professional judgment by pressuring them to teach to standardized tests rather than to children, funneling underprepared recruits into the most under-resourced schools, and handing them scripted curricula that leave no room for creativity, flexibility, or expertise. The message has always been the same: teaching is a task, not a profession. What’s new is how openly this administration is saying so.

What was once the concern of teachers and education scholars is now center stage, posted on governmental social media accounts for the world to see. No longer is the disrespect and lack of care for teachers a conversation in the teachers’ lounge or an argument in an academic journal. Now, it’s on a platform followed by millions.

But this visibility was not a celebration. It was a broadened exposure designed to undermine teachers at scale. And with millions of followers witnessing this deskilling in real time, citizens are given permission to engage in that same practice of devaluation. It’s what gives school boards the authority to override teachers' expertise in selecting books. It’s what emboldens parents to dismiss teacher judgment. It’s what allows government officials to dictate how and whether teachers can honor the children in front of them.

As a teacher educator, I watch preservice teachers in my classes wrestle with whether they will have the power to tailor instruction to their students or whether they’ll just have to teach from the textbook. They fear being fired for helping a student find the right book. They’re scared of being labeled as ineffective if they choose to bring art and imagination into their classrooms. They are terrified of public attacks that might come if they acknowledge the lives and experiences of the children in their care. These are not irrational fears. This administration has made them reasonable.

Linda McMahon knows what real appreciation looks like, and she chooses dishonor instead. We don’t have to do the same. We can acknowledge that teachers are deliberately and professionally trained, that they carry knowledge, care, and sacrifice into classrooms every day to help the next generation reach their potential. We can acknowledge that even when they get it wrong, they are still out there fighting for our communities and our futures against considerable odds. We can choose to see them clearly in a world that villainizes them.

Because if we appreciate teachers the way McMahon has, we won’t have many left. But perhaps that’s exactly the goal.

Stephanie Toliver is a Public Voices Fellow and a member of the OpEd Alumni Project sponsored by the University of Illinois.