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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 27, 1999

News Release

On Their Day, Teachers Will Do What The Do Best--Teach

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- On May 4, this nation will pay tribute to its professional workers who answer to the call of "Teacher!"

There are three million of them now who spend their weekdays -- and many extra hours, too -- leading this nation's children through the fears of kindergarten along a path of academic accomplishments crowned by high school graduation. With patience and grace, these men and women fill young heads with knowledge and broaden young minds with tools and values that will enable them to continue learning throughout their lives, to contribute to society, and teach new generations themselves.

More than half of today's teachers have been in the classroom for 15 years or more. But whether they've been teaching for only a matter of days or for half a century, like Marian Olson in Oregon, Wis., they have one thing in common: the belief that they can make a difference.

In a world too often ignited by ignorance, teachers throughout history have been credited with helping find essential common ground for progress. When he was president, John F. Kennedy drew on old wisdom to warn the world: "The course of civilization is a race between catastrophe and education."

Today, notes Bob Chase, president of the 2.4 million-member National Education Association, there's also a race in the United States to find nearly 200,000 fully trained and enthusiastic new teachers every year to replace those who leave the profession.

Teacher retirement, population mobility, increasing birth rates, immigration and a trend toward smaller class size are creating regional as well as subject-area shortages . The need for more qualified instructors in math, science, history and special and bilingual education is already a major concern.

Respect for learning is an international thing, notes Chase. A Russian proverb goes: "Education is light. Lack of it is darkness." The Japanese add this dimension: "Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher."

U.S. industrial leaders like Lee Iacocca have also been known to wax eloquent about the profession. "In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else," says Iacocca.

So on Tuesday, May 4, the nation is going to salute its school teachers by allowing them to do what they do best: teach.

No holiday. Just another day in front of the class.

The special day came into being through the leadership and persistence of Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1953, she persuaded the 81st Congress to proclaim May 7 that year as National Teacher Day.

With further lobbying by the National Education Association, in the 1980s it found an official permanent home on the first Tuesday of every May.

Because nearly two-thirds of this country's public school teachers live in and around the communities where they teach, students, parents and community leaders regularly engage in a number of activities to thank them for the role they play.

Such praise helps sustain their commitment.

"I became a teacher to make a difference in children's lives," explains Susan Minerbi, an English-as-a-Second-Language teacher at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Md. "I love what I do. I help children learn -- and that's satisfaction that money can't buy."

Horace Mann himself one of the most respected and dynamic educators in the nation's history, made the point that young men and women don't join the profession for riches or national glory. "Teachers teach because they care," he explained. "Teaching young people is what they do best."