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Joy

Security cam captures assistant principal and student's joyful mutual birthday celebration

"Love is the curriculum," says Assistant Principal Ford.

Arnold Ford/Instagram

Arnold Ford shares a birthday—and birthday joy—with one of his students.

When Arnold Ford went to work on his birthday in February of 2024, he knew he was in for a treat. One of his students, a girl named Cali, has the same birthday as he does, and Ford was ready. As soon as he saw Cali come bounding down the hallway with her arms spread wide, the assistant principal tossed his backpack aside, swooped the girl up and spun her around in joyful celebration.

Then the two raced down the hallway, arm in arm, so Cali could give him a balloon and a cupcake she had saved for him. All of this was captured on the security cameras at west Philadelphia's Mastery Charter School, Mann Elementary, and the footage has people cheering for amazing educators.

"I’m so grateful to God for allowing me to see another year," Ford wrote when he shared the video on his Instagram page. "I’m even more grateful that LOVE continues to be the centerpiece of my entire life."

"And… as you can see… I’m also grateful that I get to share a birthday with one of my favorite students," he continued. "And yes… she brought me a balloon and a cupcake, and in exchange, I told her she could dress down today. Fair trade if you ask me!

Watch:

People are gushing over the exchange in the comments.

"Do y'all teach 25th grade!? I need an elementary school experience do-over!" wrote one person.

"Bro my own parents never been that happy to see me 😭," wrote another.

"Can you imagine marinating in that love on a daily basis? What a gift this man is!" shared another.

Several people pointed out that no one else in the video so much as blinked, which is a testament to the fact that this wasn't out of the ordinary. Clearly, Mr. Ford brings this energy to work every day.

"I think it’s important for us to celebrate WITH our students and families," Ford tells Upworthy. "[Cali's] birthday is a big deal to her, and so is mine. We talk about it ALL year. So when that day came, what you saw was just a natural, genuine reaction that we both had. She was excited to be celebrating me, and I was excited to be celebrating her."

Educators like Ford can make such an enormous difference in children's lives, transforming a school into a place filled with positive interactions where kids know people genuinely care about and enjoy being around them. That's what Ford loves about his job as well.

"It really is the reciprocal nature of the work," he tells Upworthy. "We get so much more than we ever put out. Love. Joy. Laughter. The more we sow those things, we see them return exponentially in this work. That’s why when I often say 'Love is the curriculum,' it’s because I recognize how blessed I am to be able to put positivity and joy at the center of my experience with them. It’s humbling."

"In other words, I love that I don’t have to wait until Fridays to get paid." he adds.

Here's to Mr. Ford and all of the dedicated, incredible educators out there who pour their love into helping children learn and grow and thrive. They really do deserve all the balloons and cupcakes—and all the pay raises as well.

You can follow Arnold Ford on Instagram.


This article originally appeared in April.

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Heroes

High school teacher describes her day in viral video with a plea to give educators grace

@kpintoledo/TikTok

Katie Peters shared a day in the life of pandemic teaching and pleaded for teachers to be given grace.

Teachers are heroes under normal circumstances. During a pandemic that has upended life as we know it, they are honest-to-goodness, bona fide superheroes.

The juggling of school and COVID-19 has been incredibly challenging, creating friction between officials, administrators, teachers, unions, parents and the public at large. Everyone has different opinions about what should and shouldn't be done, which sometimes conflict with what can and cannot be done and don't always line up with what is and isn't being done, and the result is that everyone is just … done.

And as is usually the case with education-related controversies, teachers are taking the brunt of it. Their calls for safe school policies have been met with claims that kids aren't at risk of severe COVID, as if teachers' health and well-being are expendable. Parents' frustrations with remote or hybrid learning are taken out on the teachers who are constantly scrambling to adjust to ever-changing circumstances that make everything about teaching more complicated.

Superheroes, seriously.

But as Toledo, Ohio high school teacher Katie Peters says, teachers aren't looking for accolades. They're doing the jobs they love, even though they're incredibly difficult right now. What they do need is for people to understand what a teacher's day looks like and to extend them some grace.

Peters' TikTok video describing what she did one day as a teacher in addition to the six classes she taught has been viewed more than 2.5 million times.

After sharing that she taught six periods and subbed during her planning period, she said, “I helped a young man find safe housing. I found a winter coat for a girl who didn’t have one. I located a student's missing backpack and arranged for a Chromebook replacement for that student. I gave a student a little bit of cash for a haircut and made sure another student had enough food to last them through the weekend.”

She also comforted a student who had cramps, supported a student who was going through his first heartbreak, saved a student's art project with some super glue, walked a student to class so they wouldn't feel alone and wrote a card for a student who was struggling.

That was just during the school day.

After school, she had a meeting, tutored a student, then wrote a college recommendation letter for a student who brought her the request the day before it was due.

Then she spent four hours at home planning "fun, inviting, exciting lesson plans that could, at the drop of a hat, need to go virtual without any warning."

But Peters said she didn't want a single accolade. "No teacher I know wants a pat on the back or gratitude," she said. "What they do need is grace." She pointed out that doing all of these things are what teachers love to do and what fulfills them. But it's also why they're tired. The pandemic has made everything harder.

Peters said a piece of her was shattered when she read a comment in a community forum about her district going back to in-person learning, "Oh, it's nice the teachers decided to work again." As if teachers have not been working the hardest they ever have during all of the pandemic upheaval? Please.

"Nobody, in the history of ever, has been motivated by ugly," she said. "Loving kids is the purest form of beauty that exists—and it's always going to beat your ugly."

Well said.

Peters told TODAY that negative comments make teachers feel defeated, which impacts their job. “I’m not sure how much people realize that their words carry over into our ability to care for their children,” Peters said. “We need you to hold space for us and understand that we are doing our best given the circumstances.”

People loved Peters' honest and heartfelt account of what teachers are experiencing and what they really need from the rest of us right now. Grace. Patience. Understanding. Not ugliness or blame.

If anyone who isn't a teacher has something negative to say and thinks they could handle the job better, they are more than welcome to get their teacher training education and certification and try their hand at it. Otherwise, give teachers the respect they deserve and the grace they so desperately need right now as they try to keep their hole-filled lifeboats afloat with paperclips and a hot glue gun.

Teachers, we see you. We've got your back. Hang in there.

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The reason this teacher was suspended shows a painful reality for many LGBTQ people.

By all accounts, Stacy Bailey is an excellent teacher. After all, she was selected as her school's Teacher of the Year. Twice. Then she was suspended.

Considering how difficult it is to keep quality educators in classrooms that are often understaffed and lacking resources, you may already be scratching your head and wondering what horrible thing Bailey must have done to be taken out of her classroom for an entire year.

Bailey was suspended because she showed her elementary students a photograph of her future wife.

According to reports, the reason Bailey was suspended had everything to do with the fact that she acknowledged that she was in a relationship with a woman.

NBC News reports that Bailey is suing the Texas school district for discrimination. She was removed from the classroom for, as one parent reportedly complained, promoting a "homosexual agenda."

She didn't lead a class on homosexuality. She didn't spend an hour discussing painstaking details of her relationship and love life. Instead, during an event meant to introduce students and teachers, Bailey, who's been an educator for over a decade, showed her students pictures of her family and friends — which included Bailey's future wife.

"During her tenure with the district, there has never been an issue with her open sexual preferences until this year," the district wrote in a statement. "The issue at Charlotte Anderson Elementary School is whether Mrs. Bailey has followed district guidelines requiring that controversial subjects be taught in 'an impartial and objective manner.' Teachers shall not use the classroom to transmit personal beliefs regarding political or sectarian issues."

But that statement seems to be hanging a whole lot on Bailey showing a picture of her wife-to-be.

Bailey is fighting back because she knows this is about more than just a teaching job.

Bailey has been trying to incorporate better representation and protections into her school for a while. The Advocate reports that shortly before she was suspended, Bailey spoke to the school about adding LGBTQ-inclusive language to the school's anti-discrimination policies. A day before she was suspended, Bailey reached out to other schools to see whether they had gay-straight alliances (groups where students could come to learn about each other and fight for equality regardless of identification) and to see how those were handled and led.

Bailey is fighting to be reinstated at her school. In February, numerous people came to a school board meeting to show their support for her. But the school district seems to be standing firm on its position.

Representation matters everywhere — in classrooms too.

Teachers are people, and people come from all kinds of backgrounds and have all kinds of families and lives. Of course if you stop and think about it, teachers who don't identify as LGBTQ often speak about their partners without any kind of fuss. That's because being open about heterosexual relationships in both passing and more in-depth ways has always been accepted as the norm. But families and marriages can look a lot of different ways and it's important that both students and parents realize that when a teacher who identifies as gay mentions their partner, they're just trying to lives their lives like anyone else would.

It's unclear what the school district's exact concerns are, but the fear seems to be that children who learn about the sexual orientation of the trusted adults in their lives may somehow emulate that orientation. But there's no evidence that's true. You know what we do have evidence of? That teachers who are LGBTQ are afraid to speak out and be themselves at work. That students who see LGBTQ role models in their lives may feel more comfortable with themselves as they discover who they are. And, really, isn't that what we want for all children?

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600,000 kids could've missed a meal with schools closed. But these teachers had a plan.

Arizona provides less funding for schools than it did in 2008 and is ranked 49th in the country for teacher salary.

After months of rising tensions with state lawmakers over low pay and low funding, teachers walked out of schools April 26, 2018. In the second week of the strike, educators weren't backing down and planned to head to the state capitol to continue arguing for higher funding.

But even in the middle of a protest, teachers had their students' needs in mind.

Photo by Andrew Millett Photography.

"My friends and family believe in properly funding our public schools and making sure kids are affected by the walkout as little as possible," said Rodi Vehr, a first-grade teacher at Longview Elementary in Phoenix.

As teachers were preparing for the strike, they were making plans to help their students, too.

Thousands of city leaders and community members across Arizona were opening their doors to provide free or low-cost child care and meal services for the nearly 850,000 students whose schools were closed due to a statewide educator walkout.

Community members throughout the state worked together to plan meals for the 600,000 students who rely on free or reduced-price school meals. According to Vehr, her friends and family pooled their resources to buy and prepare $1,000 worth of meals for students to take home.

"They [legislators] keep saying that children should never be hungry, and we want to help make sure they aren't," Vehr says.

Elaine Glassman and Abbey Johnson crowdfunded money to provide 90 students with meals. Photo courtesy Elaine Glassman.

Elaine Glassman, a first-grade teacher in the Deer Valley Unified School District, put out a call for food donations on social media and was able to prepare meals for 90 students in the district. Glassman works in a Title I School, a federal designation for schools with a high number of students that come from low-income families.

"Sometimes they don’t even have dinner," Glassman says. "They’ll have breakfast and lunch at school, and then not eat until breakfast the next day."

After the first week of schools closures, her school announced it would open its cafeteria from 11 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. to serve students throughout the duration of the walkout. After it became clear the walkout would extend to at least a second week, most of the state’s 1,794 Title I schools arranged for meals to be available to their students as well.

In addition to meals, community organizations are finding ways to provide child care services to keep kids engaged and safe during school hours.

Photo courtesy YMCA Valley of the Sun, used with permission.

Peyton Tune, the chief operating officer for the YMCA Valley of the Sun, announced that its facilities would extend their daycare hours and reduce their prices until the end of the walkout.

"Nobody will be turned away based on an inability to pay," Tune says.

Photo courtesy YMCA Valley of the Sun, used with permission.

Arizona is far from alone in the ongoing battle for education funding.

Teachers in West Virginia were the first to strike this year, and their success — a 5% raise for all teachers in the state — inspired educators in Oklahoma (which secured a funding raise, too) Colorado, and Arizona to follow suit. The recent strikes are emblematic of America's larger issues with how it funds schools and how students and teachers lose when that funding isn't enough.

While they’ve expressed how much they miss teaching and working with their students, Glassman and Vehr say they’re committed to walk out of their schools and proudly wear their #RedForEd until their schools receive funding.

Until that happens, they have one message for students, families, and fellow educators: Stay strong.

Photo by Jeisenia Estrada.

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