I’m Sorry. Thank you. We are so grateful.

An Open Letter to the Teachers of the World

I consider myself to be a teacher by nature. When other kids were working in retail or food service every summer, I was working in educational camps. My dream from childhood was to become a Ph.D. Biologist, but I have to admit that most of what I actually pictured was teaching. I was a TA in college, a substitute teacher in grad school, and a middle school science teacher at the start of my career.

I share these things to suggest that I know what it’s like to be a teacher. And I do. I know what it’s like to manage a classroom, lead parent-teacher conferences, participate in professional development workshops, coach after-school sports, and attend pep rallies with the school letters painted on my cheeks. As if that could give me any context for what you’ve just endured.

Here’s what I do know. In the best of times, in the best of schools, teaching is a challenging profession. There are so many reasons for this that we won’t explore here because that is a treatise, not a blog post. But if you chip away at that best-case scenario – schools that lack financial support, technological support, community support, administrative support – you end up with an increasingly stressful (even while rewarding) occupation. It’s not surprising that we had a teacher shortage and waning enrollment in teacher education programs at colleges and universities before the pandemic. Too many teachers, schools, and communities lacked the support that they needed to thrive.

Enter COVID. Exit Light.

A friend of mine launched an educator wellness initiative in the middle of COVID and interviewed 50+ teachers. I asked her what they’d shared about student engagement, technology challenges, and keeping it all coordinated. She said, “Rachel, they didn’t talk about any of that. They all just cried.”

My heart broke. I can’t imagine what it was like. Not the technology challenges. That must have been insanely brutal, especially with elementary-school-aged students. But that’s not it. Not the exhausting politics of whether and when and how to return to the classroom. There’s not a teacher I know who wouldn’t want to get back to their kids if they believed it was safe for themselves and everyone else. But it was so unclear when and if we were safe this year that we made choices. Devastating choices. Time will reveal how devastating as we go back and study what, exactly, just happened here. But I don’t even mean THAT part.

Teachers love their students, even the ones that drive them crazy. They want them to grow up safe and happy and silly and LEARNING. They want them to have every opportunity in the world. I can tell you firsthand that it’s a struggle teaching them and knowing how little you can actually protect them or support that goal. But with COVID teachers had some students simply disappear from their classroom. They watched others completely melt down under the new regime. They had to watch students whose families lost employment struggle to even get food, with support services shut down. And they had to watch those students and their families drowning through their Zooms. All while undergoing the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that came with COVID in their own lives, and attempting to oversee homeschooling for their own children.

Or Perhaps All the Light We Cannot See?

There is a well-liked and critically acclaimed novel titled, “All the Light We Cannot See.” Set in WWII, the story was so bleak that I struggled to see any light. I panned it on Goodreads when I read it because it seemed to be a lie. I understood the point of the title. You can’t see the light, but it’s there in every tiny act of human kindness that happens in the midst of a hellscape. Only I didn’t feel it when I read the book. There just wasn’t ENOUGH light to beat away all that darkness. Now, imagining what it was like for teachers during COVID, I finally get it. I may have to take down that review.

Because through everything that’s come at us this year you can see teachers’ perseverance. With no warning and no time they had to move entire curricula online, learning how to use the tools to deliver it (this is akin to learning to fly while taking off with a plane filled with children), and somehow still attempt to manage student behavior and keep them on-task. More than that, to try to boost their spirits, to serve as a positive and strong light in all the darkness the children must have felt.

And they did that. I’m speaking to the parents out there now when I say that I don’t know if you’ve seen the DELUGE of teachers teaching teachers material that has appeared online, nor if you’ve seen the efforts that teachers have gone to in order to support their students, their families, and their communities. If you haven’t, go Google it a bit. There hasn’t been much light in the news lately. Finding these stories will make you smile and that alone is worth it. What’s more, take time to think about the opportunity you’ve just had if you’re a parent. You’ve just had a unique-in-history peek into your children’s classrooms. You may have a better idea of what it takes to wrangle and educate 20+ little humans, particularly under such difficult circumstances.

And teachers, you’ve had had an unprecedented glimpse into the lives of your students as well. As a teacher, you learn quickly that many kids’ home lives are not what you may imagine, but it’s hard to truly know what’s going on unless a child or parent is very forthcoming. Now teachers may have a better understanding of what challenges their students face outside of the classroom.

In an idealistic worldview, which as an entrepreneur one must have, I could see this ushering a new era in which the schooling and raising of children could become more of a coordinated team effort, now that teachers and parents have gotten a better understanding of one another. Let us hope that we will make such lemons out of lemonade.

I’m sorry. Thank you. We are so grateful.

To wrap this up, I want to go back to the title of this post. This past year I felt like I was watching friends and family who were on the frontlines of education be run over by a truck and all I could do was say, “I’m sorry. Thank you. I’m so grateful.”

“I’m sorry for what you just endured. I’m sorry that you were asked to do SO much more than me, and than so many other Americans and other citizens around the world. I’m sorry that you watched kids and families struggle who matter to you. I’m sorry that society wasn’t always supportive of you or mindful of your challenges and sacrifices. I’m sorry that we’ll never be able to undo the trauma that you and your students just experienced.

But I thank you. And I’m going to go ahead and go out on a limb and speak for everyone else. We are so grateful.

Let’s Stop the Learning Losses for Good

Learning losses happen every day for roughly 1/3 of American kids and 2/3 of kids around the world. Hello PLATO is built to tackle this problem. But first we have to admit that this is NOT a COVID problem.

Hello PLATO Named to the GSV Cup Elite 200

Hello PLATO has been selected as a semifinalist among 200 leading pre-seed and seed education technology startups competing to win the GSV Cup, with a prize purse valued at $1 million. Semifinalists are recognized as top innovators in the EdTech sector, disrupting the way people teach and learn worldwide.

Why does student learning have to be personalized?

Did you know that over 1 billion kids don’t have internet access at home? That’s 2/3 of all kids and 1/3 of American kids. Hello PLATO is a learning platform based on WhatsApp that brings online learning to kids with no internet at home.

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Did you know that over 1 billion kids don’t have internet access at home? That’s 2/3 of all kids and 1/3 of American kids. Hello PLATO is a learning platform based on WhatsApp that brings online learning to kids with no internet at home.