During the week of May 13–17, the Shorewood School District celebrated school staff and teachers during National Teacher Appreciation Week.
This year, teachers and staff received free breakfast, two free lunches, a specialized coffee bar and many more drinks and treats for the special week.
“I feel like the school and students do take [teacher appreciation week] pretty seriously,” said Hayley Kutz, English teacher. “I think one nice thing about Shorewood students is that they are very vocal about their appreciation for their teachers frequently and not just on that week.”
Regina Schindel, physics teacher, agrees that the district’s free food and students’ actions are very expressive of their thankfulness, but wishes that students would express appreciation without being prompted to do so.
“Showing gratitude is good for your mental health,” Schindel said. “It also comes with maturity, so I would expect juniors and seniors to do it more, and I see freshmen doing it more than juniors and seniors.”
Kutz believes that many actions of the community lead to a stronger recognition of teachers and administrators.
“I feel like in school board meetings and [with] the passing of the referendum recently, we see that the community values and appreciates the teachers too,” Kutz said.
Michael Sell, chemistry teacher, reflected on his strengths and accomplishments over the school year.
“I’ve tried out some new curriculum ideas, so I think that was a big accomplishment [this year],” Sell said. “I tried to revamp some of my chemistry curriculum to match more research-based teaching techniques.”
Many teachers have new goals and ideas for future years to improve their teaching abilities.
“I don’t want to just keep teaching the same things I’ve always taught,” Sell said. “I’m always looking for better ways to teach the material, like new methods or different labs.”
Sell hopes to see students put greater effort into being active participants during class discussions.
“I just want kids to be present and engaged,” Sell said. “I would rather take a student that listens and participates and does things in class over a student that doesn’t attend or doesn’t pay attention in class but still gets the work done.”
For Sell, phones are a large distraction during class that take away from student engagement.
“I see so many kids do a lot of good work in class, but then it is contrasted by a lot of students that think being at school is phone time all day,” Sell said.
Another obstacle faced by teachers is student plagiarism and cheating in relation to classwork, specifically with the evolution of AI tools, such as ChatGPT.
“Put more time and effort into learning the material instead of cheating, because if you’re cheating, you’re not learning it, and then I, as a teacher, can’t help you, because I don’t know what you know,” Kutz said.
Kutz expresses a wish for students to be more communicative about their difficulties with classwork and assessments.
“I would like students to listen more,” Kutz said. “A lot of kids, as soon as you say something, have a lot of emotions, so I wish they would take more time to tell us what they need when they’re feeling frustrated.”