Teachers deserve our respect and kudos every day for the hard work they do, but they are recognized at least one day a year when World Teachers’ Day arrives.
Every October 5, the world recognizes the vital role of teachers in all societies around the world. Teachers in the United States struggle with low salaries, indifferent school boards, and (sometimes) jail time.
Teaching can be a thankless job, but some educators succeed and succeed. On this World Teachers’ Day, let’s talk about some of the most famous teachers in history.
Meet some of the most famous history teachers
Frederic Douglass
The slave and future author, civil rights activist and government official also helped his fellow slaves read and write. Douglass learned to read and write from the wife of a slaver.
Jaime Escalante
You know you’re a famous teacher when they make a movie about it. Stand and Deliver is based on the work of Escalante who teaches math to struggling students in East Los Angeles.
Albert Einstein
The world’s most famous physicist is also one of its best-known teachers. Einstein taught at Princeton after immigrating to the United States from Europe.
Pope Francis
The current head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis avoids taking too long to work. This work ethic must have come in handy when he taught literature and psychology in Argentina in the 1960s.
Bart Giamatti
Before he was the Major League Baseball commissioner who banned Pete Rose, he was a professor of literature and president of Yale.
Erin Grunwell
She encouraged her students to express themselves through writing. She founded the Freedom Writers Foundation, and her story was made into a film starring Hilary Swank.
Spike Lee
The acclaimed director doesn’t just work behind the camera. He also works in front of a classroom as a professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Christa McAuliffe
A former high school teacher in Maryland and New Hampshire, McAuliffe was the first civilian in space. She died in the space shuttle Challenger tragedy in 1986.
Maria Montessori
You know you are one of the most famous teachers in history as the educational system you developed is still in use today. Almost as impressive? She was the first female doctor in Italy, in 1896 .
Toni Morrison
The Pulitzer Prize -winning author of Beloved is also a well-known teacher. Before becoming a full-time writer, Toni Morrison was a professor at Texas Southern University and Howard University.
JK Rowling
Before making her fortune writing the Harry Potter books and becoming the Queen of Twitter Hater Crackdown, Rowling was an English teacher in Portugal.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
These days, Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning church leader, but he started in the classroom. He graduated from the University of South Africa in 1954 and immediately returned to Johannesburg Bantu High School to teach English and history.
Anne Sullivan
An eye disease did indeed blind Anne Sullivan, but that didn’t undermine her resolve. She taught Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, to read braille. With Sullivan’s help, Keller eventually earned a college degree.
Saint Mother Teresa
Before being a humanitarian and Catholic saint, Mother Teresa was a teacher and principal in India.
When did World Teachers’ Day start and why?
Education is as old as humanity itself, but World Teachers’ Day only began on October 5, 1994. It was then UNESCO officially added it to the calendar to commemorate the adoption of a education measure in 1966.
Having an annual day to honor teachers draws attention to the fact that everyone on Earth deserves a quality education and that quality education begins with qualified teachers. However, finding teachers is difficult.
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The United States has severe teacher shortages, and the problem is worse in developing countries. Several countries in Africa, including Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda and the Central African Republic have classrooms with more than 50 students for every teacher, according to UNESCO data.
