In 1994, October 5 was declared as the World Teachers’ Day by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Teachers’ Day celebrates the rights and responsibilities of teachers and focuses on assessing, appreciating, and improving the status of educators across the globe. This day is also aimed at helping address the various issues and challenges those teachers face.
This year’s theme is “Teachers at the heart of education recovery”. This is a very fitting theme as the world has been dealing with the Covid-19 crisis which has drastically impacted education in South Africa. For those schools fortunate enough to be able to offer online teaching, their teachers have faced issues like connectivity, not being able to see all the learners at once and in some instances, technical challenges. For schools unable to offer online classes, their teachers needed to spend a lot of time preparing material which learners could take home.
Despite so many challenges, teachers supported their learners during this difficult time. This year’s theme is a reminder of all these contributions and the hard work that the teachers put in during the pandemic, and today we celebrate all our educators.
Well done and thank you.
