My wife just called me to say that, in the midst of grading papers, she was confronted by a camera crew at the door of her classroom. It seems that one of her students from a previous year decided to take it upon themselves to nominate Mrs. Carbone (now Mrs. Carbone-Belknap, thank you!) to be Teacher of the Week, and she got the nod.

So, she’ll be on TV tonight. We’ll be running the DVR for sure. UPDATED: Doh! I’m a dolt. Forgot to mention that this will be on Channel 13 in Rochester!

UPDATED AGAIN!  I’m even more of a dolt than I originally thought.  Sarah will be on Channel 8, not Channel 13, and apparently, she’ll be on Tuesday, not tonight.

I’m so excited for her, she really deserves the praise. If my teachers cared half as much about me as Sarah cares about her students, I rarely knew it. Sometimes, that means taking her work home with her, sometimes that means she spends a little more time talking to counselors, parents and therapists about troubled students, sometimes it means a whole lot of doubt and a whole lot of burn-out anxiety and thankfully, sometimes that means being on TV to get a little recognition for her hard work.

I think these are things to think about whenever you hear people carp about the price of educating kids: the people who do this job have to care a lot more than most of us. You don’t pay half of what they do every day. You don’t see kids in nearly-hopeless situations trying to keep up with kids who have everything and appreciate nothing. You don’t get yelled at by disconnected parents that expect you to teach and raise their children. You don’t feel the pain of loss that my wife does whenever she sees more school violence on TV. I marvel at my wife’s compassion every day, and we should all be thankful that there are lots more like her.

Congratulations, Sarah Carbone-Belknap! You’re teacher of the week every week in my book and I love you!

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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