Give our teachers, ‘a standing ovation!’
By Charles Moseley
Parents pray for our teachers. Teachers pray for our parents. We all need to pray for our students. From my very first teacher, my mother, Elizabeth Moseley, to my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Grooms. From my second grade teacher Mrs. Pittman to my high school basketball Coach McNamara and college Professors Samuel Yette and Wallace Terry, teachers have impacted my life until this very day. In the past few weeks I returned to the classroom as a substitute teacher. If I had to describe the experience in a word it would be ‘WOW!’
It wasn’t as if I had not experienced what it was like to have the privilege of “standing in the gap” for teachers on a temporary basis. As a recent college graduate, I had been a sub during the early ’80’s. I also worked as a teacher’s aide in an elementary class for students with emotional problems and even taught an adult education class briefly. I grew up in a household of educators. My father, Samuel Meredith Moseley, was a high school principal. Fast forward 30 years, including stints at Wymore Tech in Eatonville, Fla., Booker T. High School in Miami, Fla., and Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the so-called, “Separate But Equal” era, which permeated the Jim Crow South up into the early 1960’s. My mother, Elizabeth Moseley, was a first grade teacher here in Broward for 34 years and my older brother, Samuel Meredith Moseley III, also is a middle school social studies teacher at a school for “at-risk” students. In the past few weeks I’ve worked with students on the elementary, middle school, and high school level.
In so doing, I have developed a new found appreciation for what it means to be entrusted with the care and education of our youth, in a new millennium. Believe me in today’s world, TEACHERS face the challenge of educating OUR CHILDREN in a society which expects them to work miracles while being underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated.
As a father of three grown Black males I am particularly concerned with the plight of young Black males who appear to be most at risk for dropping out of school and entering into the criminal justice system. As with all problems affecting students, it all begins at home. Unfortunately we are not taught in school or equipped with the tools on how to be good parents.
So until then parents, don’t expect TEACHERS to do your job as pa-rents. What you can do is support your children all through their educational process from the time they are infants and throughout their lives. And by all means, be a part of the solution by actively engaging with teachers in the education of YOUR CHILDREN’S EDUCATION. As a parent decide whether you’re going to be part of the problem or part of the solution. The choice is yours. And by all means take some time to thank a teacher, you’ll be glad you did.
Just ask yourself, where would you be today, without those who have taught you along the way? If you’ve just read this editorial, thank a teacher. OUR TEACHERS deserve A STANDING OVATION!
