Our Teachers Deserve Our Gratitude

Over the past three school years, teachers had to adapt to unexpected conditions. Since March 2020, educators have had to switch to virtual, hybrid, and socially-distanced instruction to avoid the spread of COVID-19. These extraordinary times have tested teachers' capacity for flexibility. It has challenged their dedication through disruption while working in a profession where funding gaps, low salaries, and burnout are already prevalent.

Fixing the funding gaps within our education systems, closing the academic cracks caused by COVID-19, and increasing teacher salaries are issues that will each require the dedication of parents and administrators within every school district in the country. While we can't fix all the problems in our education systems, we can pick one specific concern to improve upon on a national level. We can focus on tackling one obstacle for educators.

Teachers Are Feeling Anxious

Enrollment in teacher prep programs has been declining since before the pandemic. COVID has exacerbated the poor job satisfaction of many educators. Nearly one in four teachers surveyed by RAND in 2021 said they were likely to quit their jobs, compared to one in six before the pandemic. In 2020, the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence surveryed 5,000 U.S. teachers. They were asked to describe the three most frequent emotions they felt each day. The five most-mentioned feelings among all teachers were anxious, fearful, worried, overwhelmed, and sad. Anxiety, by far, was the most frequently mentioned emotion.

How Parents Can Help

According to a 2021 Gallup poll, most K-12 parents are satisfied with their child's quality of education. Instead of nitpicking the lesson plans of qualified educators and trying to ban books, we can enhance the educational experience for our students by giving them teachers that feel more fulfilled, less overwhelmed, and supported.

What We're Doing

My husband and I are parents to one of the lucky students who have thrived during the pandemic. She's had a series of outstanding educators we can thank for that. After hearing from them and from a close friend who is an elementary school teacher, we decided to use our experience to develop a way to show teachers our gratitude.

We've built a platform where parents can show and tell teachers we appreciate them called Grateful Mail. Gratefulmail.org integrates the mail sending platform Handwrytten with a fundraising framework to create a place for parents to send teachers "thank you" cards and PTAs to raise funds.

How It Works

Our website is currently in development. We're in the testing phase and are working with two schools to test the platform to finish and launch in late March 2022.

1. Parent-Teacher Association Leadership signs their school up for a campaign.
2. The PTA invites parents to participate.
3. Parents select a card to send to their children's teachers. Parents will be prompted to pick a design, write a note, and pay to have the card mailed. Parents will purchase the cards at cost plus $1. The $1 per card will go directly to the school's PTA.
4. Cards are mailed directly to teachers at the school's address.
5. At the campaign's conclusion (usually the last day of the school year), the PTA leadership will withdraw funds via Stripe.

We currently have nine schools working on their campaign profiles. We will spend the next few weeks reaching out to PTA presidents, asking them to sign up in time to send teachers mail thanking them for their work this school year. We hope to reach at least 250 teachers this first school year's end. We hope to reach at least 10% of this country's 3.5 million public school teachers in future years.

Our teachers have always deserved our gratitude, but they do now more than ever. Showing gratitude is one way we can contribute to the emotional well-being of the people who shape our society's future.