As I watch my 2nd and 4th graders start 100% remote classes this week, I’ve noticed something big that’s worth calling out: Teachers are now required to be IT professionals.

I’ve volunteered in my kids’ classrooms enough to know one thing for sure: Teachers are not IT professionals and never wanted to be IT professionals. The most experienced teachers, based on my observations, are excellent in spite of the technology that surrounds them. For example, I’m generalizing here, but my kids’ 1st-grade teacher was an expert at bringing nature-experiences into the classroom (and the kids out of the classroom!). My kids’ 2nd-grade teacher is an expert at empathizing with and supporting kids of varying backgrounds (while teaching them the 3 R’s, of course). These Heroes are experts at teaching and have invested countless hours honing their craft.

Our Grade School Teachers’ Job Descriptions Now Include:

• Teaching
• Babysitting/Day Care
• Proctoring
• Parenting
• Social Working
• Doctoring
• Therapizing
• IT Troubleshooting (hardware & software)

It’s that last one that boggles my mind. I’ve invested the last 15 years becoming an expert at WordPress, which is a very small sub-sub-sub-section of IT software. Our teachers are expected to troubleshoot hardware (random computers/tablets/phones, iPads, Chromebooks, Smart Boards) and software (Google Meet, Seesaw, Google Classroom, MyOn, etc etc etc) – for each of these things, one could easily invest a decade getting to expert level (and at least a year becoming serviceable).

All this is to say that today more than any other, we need to rejoice that we have these Heroes in our lives – THANK YOU GRADE SCHOOL TEACHERS!!!