A Teacher Appreciation reflection from someone who has spent more than two decades in online higher education.
There are handmade cards taped to classroom doors. Donuts in the faculty lounge. Assemblies where students cheer for the teachers standing in front of them.
But what about the instructor sitting alone at a desk at 11 o’clock at night — grading discussion posts, responding to student emails, and preparing feedback for people they have never met in person?
Who celebrates them?
The Work That Happens in Silence
I have spent more than twenty years in online higher education. I have been a faculty member, a course designer, a mentor to new online instructors, an online faculty manager and trainer, a dissertation mentor and chair, and an advocate for the students who choose online learning because it is the only option that fits their lives.
In that time, I have watched online instructors do extraordinary work — quietly, consistently, and largely without recognition.
They build relationships with students through nothing more than words on a screen. They track down the student who suddenly went silent in week three. They write detailed feedback on assignments that took far longer to evaluate than any spreadsheet ever accounts for. They attend virtual office hours that no one shows up to — and they keep scheduling them anyway.
A Word About Adjunct Faculty
Adjunct instructors are the backbone of online higher education. Many are teaching multiple sections simultaneously — managing large class sizes, steep grading loads, and demanding student needs — often without the job security, benefits, or institutional support that full-time faculty receive.
They do this work because they believe in it.
Adjuncts show up. Every single term. Because the students on the other side of that screen are real people with real goals — working adults, career changers, parents studying after their children go to bed — and those students deserve an instructor who shows up fully prepared and genuinely invested.
That deserves more than a week of recognition.
Why I Designed the An Inspired Educator Collection
After more than two decades in this field, I wanted to create something for the educators who rarely see themselves celebrated.
Not generic gifts. Not products designed for a traditional classroom that have nothing to do with the experience of teaching online.
I designed journals for capturing the ideas that come to you between grading sessions. Desk mats and mouse pads that bring inspiration to the workspace where so much invisible work gets done. Products that say — directly and indirectly — what you do matters.
Every design in the An Inspired Educator Collection began with a belief I have held since my first year in this work:
The quality of a student’s experience depends entirely on the quality of the instructor’s dedication.
And that dedication deserves to be honored.
To the Online Instructor Reading This
Whether you are in your first semester or your twentieth year — the work you do, and the time you give to your students, is noticed.
Not always by your institution. Not always by the systems that measure productivity in enrollment numbers and retention rates.
But it is noticed and experienced by your students. Even when they do not say it.
And it is recognized here — by someone who has been in your shoes for a very long time.
Thank you for teaching students you cannot see — with a dedication that never wavers.
(Click on either of the links above to view the collections available.)
Dr. Bruce A. Johnson is an educator, author, and the founder of An Inspired Educator. With more than twenty years in online higher education, he writes about teaching, learning, and the experience of being an inspired educator in a demanding field.