This is a love story, of sorts; a stream-of-consciousness gathering of thoughts and concerns, a song of praise for unsung heroes whose daily routines have been upended.

Teaching isn’t an easy career to begin with. Sure, there are those people who think it’s an 8-to-4 job, with summer’s free and two weeks of Christmas vacation.

What they don’t realize is, after staying in your classroom until 5 p.m., every day, you take work home - papers to grade, lessons to fine-tune, phone calls to parents - the list continues. They forget that you take tickets at ball games and sponsor four extra-curricular activities and advise the yearbook, which now, because of no school, you have to revamp and complete, most likely, on your own, since students cannot be in the facility.

And you do all of that while caring for your own family, while driving an 80-mile round trip from your hometown to school, so you can shape the future of this country.

I want you to know, though, that most of us get it. We know teaching is infused in your blood and sweat and tears, that you are worrying even more about the student who has special needs and you worry about how will their needs be met now, or the student whose one - two, if you count breakfast - balanced meal is school lunch, or the student who relies on the safe shelter of that brick and mortar building or the gifted student who won’t be challenged without the extra push you’ve supplied.

We do worry, though, about the student who requires extra reassurance - sometimes more than you feel you should give, the ones whose anxiety is definitely heightened during this away time from routine and calm, the ones who, even if they don’t always display it, rely on you for safe haven. How can we keep some sense of normalcy in an age of new normal with no clear end in sight?

And, we worry about you, too, how the apprehension and uncertainty and fear may creep in. We pray every day you keep the spirit of learning alive, keep pushing your students toward the stars.

Teacher training shows you how to prepare lesson plans, how to use a variety of methodologies to meet learning styles, appeal to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Teacher training prepares you for where to seek shelter during a tornado or how to herd students out of a burning building, how to safely distance you and your charges from the chaos, even if it’s only a fire drill.

It did not prepare you for a pandemic, disruption to the educational process, a quarter of learning that may leave more what ifs than answers and be fueled by comments like “I hope this works.”

No matter what pandemonium this world seems to throw in front of you, no matter what adjustments you’re learning to make - like how to run a Zoom classroom or converting your dining room table into a makeshift at-home office - you’ll handle it.

We see you now, reading books first thing in the morning and last thing at night on Facebook live, connecting with students via technology for class meetings, reconfiguring the face of local education, making adjustments for the remainder of this crazy year, which, by the way, is only 24% complete, according to the Progress Bar 2020 Twitter account.

Most importantly, we see you in your element, caring for your students and their education. Your efforts are not unnoticed. Being a teacher never gets easier, but it does get better.

And we promise, when normal returns, it will be better.