Albuquerque Public Schools
A Heartfelt Thank You: Recognizing Our Teachers and School Nurses
In her weekly message, Superintendent Durán Blakey reflects on the impact they have on students' lives.
I want to start off by thanking all of our school nurses and congratulating Robyn Blomberg, a registered nurse at San Antonito Elementary School, who was honored on Wednesday as the APS School Nurse of the Year. The announcement was made on National School Nurse Day.
And I want to thank all of our teachers as we reach the end of National Teacher Appreciation Week.
I think most everyone would agree that teachers and nurses are superheroes. They go above and beyond every single day, and the roles they play in the lives of our students can’t be overstated.
As the daughter of a nurse and a teacher, I grew up seeing how hard they worked and how much of themselves they invested into the students they worked with. My dad was a teacher, and my mom was a nurse.
Teaching and nursing aren’t jobs you can simply leave at the office. My mom and dad were always thinking about their students and patients, always rooting for them. They didn’t go into their professions for the paycheck; they went into them because they wanted to make a difference, and along the way, they touched many lives.
As I said, teachers and nurses are superheroes and role models, which is probably why my sister followed in my mom’s footsteps and became a nurse, and I followed in my dad’s footsteps and became a teacher.
Teaching has given me a great deal, including a sense of purpose and fulfillment. There’s nothing like feeling like you made a difference in a student’s life. Teaching also gave me the job I have today.
The truth is, I decided to make the leap from teaching to administration because I was frustrated and wanted to improve classroom conditions. To this day, I view things through a teacher’s lens. And my goal continues to be eliminating frustrations for teachers, because I know that’s how we get to the students.
I was reminded of all that on Monday when I visited with aspiring teachers in our wonderful Educators Rising program, which introduces students to the teaching profession and provides hands-on experience, leadership development and exposure to careers in education.
I’m happy to say that the students I met with still want to be teachers after completing internships at elementary schools. I asked them to tell me one thing they learned that they didn’t know before their internship.
They told me they didn’t realize how patient teachers have to be and how impressed they were that the teachers they shadowed were able to hold it together regardless of the situations they encountered. Yes, you have to be patient to be a teacher!
And I'm proud to say we have extraordinary teachers at APS. If you want proof, just watch this video.
Have a wonderful weekend, and Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.