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Celebrating World Teachers’ Day

A Black teacher smiles and leans down to help a young girl while she sits at a desk.

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On October 5th, students and families across the globe celebrate World Teachers’ Day to highlight the incredible role teachers play in developing the future generation of leaders.
The annual holiday commemorates the anniversary of the adoption of the Recommendations concerning the Status of Teachers by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Labour Organization at a special intergovernmental conference convened by the two parties in 1966. Created with the purpose to offer concrete benchmarks for the rights and responsibilities of teachers, the Recommendations also established standards for “further education, recruitment, employment and teaching and learning conditions,” according to UNESCO. In 1997, the Recommendations were expanded to include suggestions for standards and protections for higher education personnel. Although the Recommendations were set in 1966, it took almost 30 years for UNESCO, ILO and their partner organizations to institute World Teachers’ Day in 1994.
The theme and guiding motto for World Teachers’ Day 2022 is “The transformation of education begins with teachers.” This year’s theme was motivated by the calls for action made at UNESCO’s annual Transforming Education Summit in September, which included a commitment to building more resilient education systems through ensuring teachers have access to decent working conditions and professional development opportunities.

To meet global education needs, UNESCO projects that the world will need 69 million teachers by 2030. However, some countries are facing nationwide teaching shortages as many educators have retired early or left the profession altogether. In the United States, nearly half of public schools report having teacher vacancies in 2022 due to this shortage. Additionally, a 2022 survey by the National Education Association found that Black and Hispanic teachers are “more likely to retire or leave early” than their white counterparts. This dearth of teachers disproportionately affects students of color, as a more diverse workforce can improve academic outcomes for underrepresented students.

According to a 2017 Brookings Institution report, marginalized students often “perform better on standardized tests, have improved attendance, and are suspended less frequently when they have at least one same-race teacher.” Additionally, teachers of color frequently serve as mentors for students of the same race, as these students don’t often see people who look like them in positions of leadership, which makes the recruitment of more teachers of color even more critical.

Robert F. Smith and Improving Academic Outcomes for Students

Philanthropist Robert F. Smith is an advocate for equity in the classroom, and supports initiatives that provide opportunities for students of color to grow academically and professionally. As the son of two educators, Smith has been passionate about increasing access to a quality education since he was young.

A common barrier to achieving higher levels of education is the burden of student loan debt. Student Freedom Initiative, a nonprofit organization of which Smith is Chairman, partners with historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs) to provide an alternative to other private student loans and Parent PLUS loans, which can have higher interest rates than other federal loans. Student Freedom Initiative aims to support up to 5,000 STEM majors a year at participating HBCUs and, in addition to loan alternatives, also offers students access to internship, mentorship and career-readiness resources and opportunities. “We can graduate all STEM students from HBCUs in essence forever under this program. It becomes self-sustaining,” Smith said about the initiative. “They [Student Freedom Initiative] support the next generation of students, and it gives them flexibility to actually drive back some of what I call their intellectual property—what they’ve learned in college and business—back into the communities in ways that matter.”

Learn more about Smith’s efforts with Student Freedom Initaitve.