Editorial: School’s starting, and teachers need our support

Teachers across Texas are preparing for school to begin. Parents are buying school supplies. Students are soaking up what’s left of summer. Legislators are anticipating another special session to address public school funding.

Texas public education needs to be funded properly and adequately. A state that ranked as the world’s ninth largest economy in 2021 ought to be able to pull that off. A state that wants to remain one of the world’s largest economies must pull that off—or import labor others educate.

That last clause was sarcasm. We should not rely on others to educate our future workforce; their education is our responsibility. But education is more than a means to the utilitarian end of creating a workforce.

We need to take responsibility for educating our children, not merely to benefit ourselves, but for our children’s benefit and so they benefit others wherever they go. That is quality education.

Quality education requires more than money, though we need to allocate more money to education. Quality education requires supporting the whole enterprise.

As Texas educators prepare to start another school year, I wanted to know if teachers are receiving the support they need. I asked them two questions: How do you feel about teaching going into this school year? What do you still need going into this school year?

Educators aren’t the only ones for whom these questions are relevant. They are relevant to all Texas Baptists, because many Texas teachers, administrators and educational staff come from our ranks.

I didn’t receive many responses, because those in public education are currently in training. What responses I did receive echo what I’ve heard regularly over the last few years from those in public education.

Support educators need

Sufficient funding is part of supporting the whole educational enterprise. We can advocate for this funding by contacting our state senators and representatives to let them know we expect Texas to fund public education properly and adequately. Such funding includes teacher pay raises. Texans can find contact information for their legislators here.

We can support our educators through our own direct funding. Teachers have been spending their own money for decades to buy pens, pencils, paper and other basic supplies for their students. We can purchase at least some of the school supplies teachers are having to buy themselves.

One church I know collected a short list of items from each classroom teacher in its local school district. The church then purchased the items requested.

Another part of supporting the educational enterprise is through giving our time to our local schools. In fact, teachers frequently say they need more time to do everything they are expected to do. Our time could be their “more time.”

Many teachers feel an expectation to be superhuman. One said she’s expected to be a teacher, parent, counselor, nurse, behavior specialist, intervention specialist and chef—all in one. I’ve heard variations of this feeling for several years.

One teacher said having more adults in her classroom would help immensely. In districts that cannot afford enough classroom aides—which is just about all districts—churches can enlist their members to volunteer as classroom aides or elsewhere on campus.

School administrators are glad to explain how you can become a volunteer. Give them a call, ask what they need volunteers to do, consider which of those needs you can meet, and commit time to do it.

Having served as a volunteer in our local school districts for most of the last 8 years—the exception being when our local district did not allow volunteers on campus during the COVID-19 pandemic—I can attest to how much educators value this kind of service.

We can and should support our educators by speaking encouraging words to them regularly. Educators receive criticism from just about every direction. We can be a source of more grace and less criticism.

Another simple thing we can do that goes a long way is to keep a school’s breakroom stocked with snacks.

You likely have at least one person in your congregation who is a teacher, administrator or staff member at a local school district. Ask that person the same two questions I asked, and be prepared to be the answer.

Support a teacher’s calling

Most teachers take their profession very seriously. They love teaching. They care about their students—enough to put themselves in harm’s way to protect them, enough to lose sleep at night worried about their “kids,” enough to shell out hundreds of dollars of their own money to buy even basic school supplies for their classrooms.

Most teachers can’t not teach; it’s in their bones. Many of them consider their profession a calling, in much the same way ministers are called to ministry. And like ministers can become burned out and leave ministry early, teachers can and are burning out and leaving education early.

All of this is true for teachers in public and private education. They all need encouragement and support.

So, I encourage you and your church to contact your local educators. Ask them how you can support them. Look at your available resources, and determine clear and concrete ways you can bring them to bear in serving your local educators, remembering many of them are your own brothers and sisters in Christ.

That last statement points to another reason we need to support our educators—many of them are fellow Christians. They see education as more than a job, more than a paycheck, more than just teaching. For them, education is their ministry. It is God’s calling on their lives. It is how they communicate Christ’s love for all the world.

We need to support our fellow Christians serving in education, because Christ’s love for all the world is our shared responsibility. None of us are to go it alone, and none of us should feel we shoulder the load alone.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed are those of the author.