Bishop Ward encourages us to honor teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week and introduces a new ministry – MAPS (Methodists Advocating for Public Schools), with the Western North Carolina Conference.
Read a letter from Bishop Ward and Bishop Paul Leeland about Teacher Appreciation Week and public education.
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ who was a great teacher among us.
This is Teacher Appreciation week. I hope that you will join me in expressing personal gratitude to someone who teaches in our public schools. A note, a phone call, an email, an expression of gratitude in this week is most appropriate as we give thanks for all called to the profession of teaching.
A new configuration of ministry has been created between the Western North Carolina Conference and the North Carolina Annual Conference – “MAPS – Methodists Advocating for Public Schools.” Through MAPS, we will live into the resolution which we passed at Annual Conference in 2016 at both the Western North Carolina Annual Conference, convening at Lake Junaluska, and at our Annual Conference in Greenville. We agreed together that we would be advocates for public schools, attentive to the legislative process and pressing our legislators to continue to raise salaries for teachers so that they would receive compensation commensurate with the service that they offer; that children and young people would have the supplies and the environment most conducive to learning and maturing; that our schools of higher education, our colleges of education, would have all that they need to prepare teachers for our public school system.
Let us each encourage young people to consider the profession of teaching, so important to all of us. We in the North Carolina Annual Conference, through “Congregations for Children” have demonstrated our deep commitment to children and those who work most closely with them. Through MAPS, we will continue this wonderful ministry.
Thank you for all that you do in supporting the development of children in our public schools. Thank you, all of you who are teachers; we honor you this week and give thanks for your ministry.