This morning I am thinking about teachers.

It’s teacher appreciation week. That doesn’t always mean a lot, but the only way to make it more meaningful is to actually fill it with meaning. So here goes.

Thank you. Thank you to all the teachers who have worked with me over the years. Thank you to everyone who has been an inspiration, who has been a help, who has stood beside me and fought back against the rising tide of ignorance.

Thank you to Molly Jonnum, Deanna Martin, and Robin Mills for mentoring me as a student teacher. You let some random jackass come into your experimental new course that you’d been planning and fighting for for years, and you taught me everything teacher preparation classes couldn’t. I wouldn’t be a teacher today without you.

Thank you to everyone at San Pasqual, my first job. Carol Byrnes, for taking me in and giving me advice and friendship. Kelly Devine Grigsby, for being the teacher I wanted to be, and for being my friend at the same time. Linda Schott, for working with the hardest students and never losing your sense of humor. Laura Whitten for being the perfect mentor and friend. Cindy Finn for struggling right alongside me. Renee Sherry-Farrell for being the ultimate math teacher, and Marc Salazar for being an awesome social studies teacher. Art, Trish, and George for being the best supervisors and APs I’ve ever had, and Steve Spraker for being one of the best principals. And the guys in the band for letting me play with you —  that was one of my favorite experiences. Thank you to all of you for your neverending patience and kindness, for your intelligence and your experience, and your ability to translate what you know into something that others can learn. You’re all amazing.

Thank you to — well, most people at St. Helens High School. (Maybe not the ones who tried to take my license away. Or the one who was arrested last year.) A thousand thank yous to my PLO cohort, Tonya Arnold, Carrie McCallum, LaDonna Joy, David Schmor, Gerry Tinkle, Martha Sipe, and Ron Barnett, for everything you shared with me and showed to me and talked through with me. You were the reason I made it through ten very difficult years. You do the same for your students. Thank you. Thank you to LK for being the coolest person in the building, to Brian Dickerson for being one of the most dedicated and honorable and optimistic, to Amber Horn for having the biggest heart. Thank you to Keith Meeuwsen for always fighting. Thank you to Tamera Wahl, and Bill Dale, and Sib Owens, and all the other teachers whose names I can’t remember offhand, for being the best SPED department (along with LaDonna) that I’ve known, by far. Thank you to Mike Herdrich for being an entire damn school all by yourself, and the same to Pat Brame, and also for being an artist. Thank you to Jaime  Meadows and Jean Simmons for being the librarians and for doing everything good librarians should do, despite all the crap that got heaped on you by people who don’t understand that librarians are solid gold. Thank you to Diana Peterson and Lorraine Coopersmith and Denise Bennett — and Ruth at SP — for being the secretaries and functionaries who actually run the school, and thank you to Ted and Andy and especially BG for being excellent administrators in a sea of bad ones. Thank you to Alex Reed for being the best neighbor ever, even though I was the only one who thought that. Thank you to John Prunty for beards and music and laughs, and for looking exactly like Socrates. Thank you to all the teachers I knew and talked with and liked but did not name here — including Jessica Porter and Linda D’Amario and Alexia Hamilton and John Lessard and Cory Young and Todd Smith and Mary Downey and Kelli Curtis and — honestly I don’t remember everyone’s name, but I remember you, and I am grateful to you for the work you do.

Thank you to Tom Fuller for teaching me.

Last but not least, thank you to all of the excellent teachers at my current school here in Arizona: thank you especially to the brilliant and wonderful Lisa Watson, for everything that you do and everything that you give, and for everything that you are not appreciated for: I see you, I appreciate you. Thank you to Scott Ayers for being so damn delightful, and to Marty Sade for being so damn cantankerous, and to both of you for your brilliance and your dedication. Thank you to Danielle Randall for being so incredibly practical and capable, and also so much damn fun. Thank you to Toni Ramos-Hickman for being everyone’s mom, and for sharing coffee with me. Thank you to Jim Collins for teaching math without being evil yourself, and for reading every day. Thank you to Amanda Hanson for being the Platonic ideal of a teacher. Thank you to Adriana and Veronica, and Kellie, for fighting through the first years and being excellent teachers despite all the terrible nonsense you had to confront. Thank you to Mustafa Kilcak and Aichu Zhalilova for being so cool and so kind. Thank you to Helena Boosamra-Ball for being so — everything — and for loving dinosaurs and trivia. Thank you to Melisa and Scott Cole, Diana Benson, and Barbara Kahn for doing good work, and then getting out when the getting was good. Thank you to Mimi Akcay for being an excellent counselor, and to Carol McCluer and especially Dana McGirr for running the office. Thank you to Mustafa Alkhazov, and to Tim Luttrell in St. Helens, for being the angels of the school — and also for being the kindest men, and good fathers, and for working despite terrible health crises, both of you. I don’t know how the hell you do what you do, but I am forever grateful. Thank you to Florencia Ruiz for being the linchpin that held the admin together and made the school a hundred times better by your presence and professionalism.

And thank you especially, forever, with all of my heart, to my wife: who taught me everything that has made me what I am, who taught me everything I know about being an adult, and being an artist, and being in love and being married. Thank you for being so incredible in every possible way — and, as if you weren’t already perfect, for coming to teach beside me every day for the last three years, for being an inspiration, for being an amazing teacher even though you didn’t have the experience or training. Nothing stops you. You are a wonder. I love you. Thank you.

Thank you to everyone I missed. Thank you to everyone who teaches.