From Cliff Carmody
Executive director, Southwest/West Central Service Cooperative, Marshall

Tuesday, May 6 is National Teacher Day. Be sure to thank a teacher for making your schools great.

Teachers in southwest and west central Minnesota touch so many lives. National Teacher Day is a great time to recognize and thank teachers for the contributions they make to our communities every day.

There are many ways to thank a teacher. One way is to provide school supplies to the classroom. In most classrooms, there are kids who can’t afford the basic supplies for school, like crayons, notebooks, pencils and so on. Teachers often spend their own money to provide supplies for those children and for their classrooms.

You can also purchase age-appropriate books for your child’s classroom — or donate books to the school library in honor of your favorite teacher. (Check with the librarian for recommendations.)

If you have some spare time, you could contact your child’s teacher and ask how you can help by volunteering in the classroom. Maybe a particular student is in need of extra one-on-one tutoring. Maybe you could assist with a reading group.

Do you have specific skills or experiences that you might be able to share in the classroom? Offer to be a “guest” teacher for a short lesson.

Another excellent way to honor a teacher on National Teacher Day is to send a “report card” to the principal. Write a letter or report card telling the principal what a great job this teacher is doing. Give specifics on how hard he or she is working and describe the results of that work — how excited the kids are about learning or how far they’ve come on a project. Send a copy of your letter to the teacher — it’s a well-deserved A+ report card. (Note: It never hurts to send these kudos to the district superintendent and school board as well.)

But don’t stop there. Contact your community newspaper and ask them to dedicate space for recognizing the teachers at your child’s school by featuring a different teacher each week.