Now in its third year, #LoveTeaching is a social media movement that encourages teachers to share why they love their profession during Valentine’s Day week. Teachers can participate individually or encourage their entire school to get involved.

No teacher needs to be told that teaching is hard, especially in February, and especially this February. We work long hours, we suffer sleepless nights of anxiety and worry. All the tension of the world is carried into our classrooms on the shoulders of our students, and we are trying to peddle hope and strength at a time that is offering us little of either. No teacher needs to be told it’s hard, and yet that’s exactly what we tell each other, all the time, and we forget to talk about all the reasons we love it so much.

Nothing this hard can be sustained without love. Seriously, without love none of us would be doing this. If we didn’t love our kids, our colleagues. If we didn’t laugh every day, even the hard ones, this would be impossible. We don’t honor that enough. We don’t celebrate, not as much as we could, how much we love this ridiculous thing we do.

Gary, Sean and Tom kicked off #LoveTeaching Week to bring teachers together in a show of passion.

How #LoveTeaching Started

Sometimes big ideas can show up in small packages, even 140-characters small. In 2015 one teacher noticed that teacher resignation letters, of all the things, were going viral. Another sent a call into the Twittersphere that asked whether we could make reasons to love the work go viral instead. A few days later, the #LoveTeaching campaign was born. It was just a few teachers reaching out to some friends at first, but it turns out it’s true: There’s nothing more powerful than sharing a love for something.

Teachers shared stories of students who changed their lives, “aha! moments” that changed possibilities and inspirational colleagues who changed their practice. A bunch of education organizations got behind the idea. That first year 5 million people interacted with the campaign – a smashing success. In 2016 teachers came ready. There were photobooths and profile “twibbons” (it’s a thing!) and chats and teacher lounge takeovers. And the campaign doubled to an inconceivable 10.8 million interactions.

Let’s Go Bigger than Ever – Are You In?

Visit weloveteaching.org to download Valentine’s grams to share this with your colleagues!

In 2017 it’s more important than ever that we turn our attention, with intention, to why we love this work. It’s imperative that we share our own joy and see noble, inspirational colleagues across the world working in their own way to help children fully realize who they are and who they can be. We can remind each other that, in classrooms just like ours, another teacher stays late to listen and advise a young person in need. Another one dribbles their drink out from impromptu laughter with middle schoolers. Another arrives while it’s still dark to make a lesson a little better.

We hope you’ll join us. If you’d like to rally others, you can grab a graphic from weloveteaching.org to share out. You can write a blog post or a Facebook Note, give a retweet or just follow along with the hashtag. Whatever you choose to do, we hope you’ll take a few minutes to think about why you #LoveTeaching.