Beyond Thank-You: What Do We Owe Our Teachers?

Walk into a staff room during Teacher’s Month and you will probably see a familiar scene. Cards on the desk. A cake in the corner. A student’s handwritten note tucked into a diary already crowded with lesson plans, worksheets and reminders. The teacher smiles, says thank you, and goes back to correcting forty notebooks before the next bell rings.

We are very good at thanking teachers. I am not sure we are equally good at asking what we owe them.

The Job We Keep Expanding

Teaching today is a very different profession from what it was even twenty years ago. A teacher is expected to know her subject, understand different kinds of learners, manage a classroom, use technology, respond to parents, track assessments, address behavioural and emotional issues, complete administrative work and now make sense of AI as well.

We have steadily expanded the job. Have we expanded the support?

The OECD’s TALIS 2024 study offers one revealing number. Across participating education systems, 52% of lower-secondary teachers identify general administrative work as a source of work-related stress, higher than any other demand measured.

Perhaps the problem is not always teaching. It is everything we have built around teaching.

When Respect Becomes Real

There is another uncomfortable question. We frequently describe teachers as architects of the future, nation builders and change makers. Yet OECD data also shows that, across its member countries, teachers typically earn less than other similarly educated professionals.

Professional respect cannot exist only in speeches. It must eventually show up in pay, time, trust, working conditions and opportunity for growth. And now AI is forcing us to confront an even more fundamental question: What is a teacher actually for?

When Knowledge Is No Longer the Advantage

For generations, the teacher possessed something the student did not have easy access to: knowledge. That advantage is disappearing. A child can ask AI to explain photosynthesis in five different ways, solve an equation step by step, translate a paragraph, create a quiz or prepare a revision plan in seconds.

I don’t see this as making teachers less important. I think it finally clarifies what great teachers were always meant to do.

The Teacher Who Knows Which Question to Ask

The teacher’s greatest value may no longer lie in being the person who knows the answer, but in being the person who knows which questions to ask. AI can explain. A teacher can notice. She notices that the child who usually talks has gone quiet. She knows when a wrong answer needs correction and when it needs encouragement. She understands when to push, when to listen and when simply to allow a child to struggle for a while.

Technology can personalise content. Teachers personalise human connection.

Can We Teach Agency Without Giving Teachers Any?

Curiosity, empathy, resilience, confidence, judgement, collaboration, responsibility and the courage to fail are not chapters that can simply be downloaded. They are developed through relationships, conversations, experiences and mistakes, which brings me to something schools speak about constantly: student agency. We want children to question, explore, make choices and think independently. But can we build independent thinkers if the adults teaching them are given very little independence themselves?

In one meeting we design elaborate frameworks for student choice. In the next, we sometimes hand teachers rigid instructions about exactly how every lesson must unfold.

We call teachers professionals and then manage them like operators. Teacher agency is not a perk. It is a prerequisite for student agency.

Who Gets Time to Learn?

The same contradiction exists in professional development. We expect teachers to create lifelong learners while often giving teachers very little time to learn themselves.

Professional development cannot simply mean attending workshops and collecting certificates. Teachers need time to observe each other, experiment, collaborate, understand emerging technology, reflect on what worked and admit when something didn’t. That last part matters. If we want innovative classrooms, teachers must occasionally have permission to get things wrong too.

We Need More Teachers

UNESCO estimates that the world will need 44 million additional primary and secondary teachers by 2030. But the challenge cannot only be about recruiting more teachers. It must be about creating a profession that talented people want to enter, remain in and grow within.

What Do We Actually Owe Teachers?

So perhaps this Teacher’s Month, gratitude needs to take a different form.

Alongside the flowers, cards and celebrations, school leaders should ask some harder questions:

What can we remove from a teacher’s day?

Where can we give them greater autonomy?

Are we investing enough in their learning?

Are we paying them fairly?

And, perhaps most importantly: Do our teachers feel trusted?

The Future Still Needs Teachers. The future of our classrooms will certainly contain more technology and more AI. Whether those classrooms also contain more curiosity, empathy, judgement, courage and humanity will depend on something far older.

The Teachers.