EMILY FENG, HOST:
Around the country, many have been celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week. Kids really do appreciate their teachers and school staff who often make a big difference in their lives. Arizona Public Media's Noor Haghighi reports from Tucson.
NOOR HAGHIGHI, BYLINE: Priscilla Dunkin is a fourth grader at Centennial Elementary School, with pink blush on her freckled cheeks.
PRISCILLA DUNKIN: In second grade, I had Miss Raboza, and she was a really good teacher. I was a little bit of a troublemaker in second grade, but it's OK 'cause she helped me grow not being a troublemaker.
HAGHIGHI: Dunkin tells me all about her current teacher, Mrs. Groom.
PRISCILLA: Whenever we're doing math and we don't know something, instead of, like, yelling at us, like - do your work, and you don't need help or anything like that - she would explain it out to us, and she would help us understand it.
HAGHIGHI: Dunkin's classmate Dejonae Allen says she really can't imagine a life without her teachers and her beloved librarian, Mrs. Martell.
DEJONAE ALLEN: I don't think that we'd have works and be able to know the amount of things like tying your shoes and just knowing how to spell.
HAGHIGHI: The National Education Association recently ranked Arizona 49th in the nation for per-student spending and 39th for the average teacher's starting salary. More than 8,000 teachers in the state quit between 2024 and 2025. But Santiago Davila, a second grader at Davis Romero Bilingual Elementary Magnet School, can tell that his teachers, like Senor Barcelo, are making an effort.
SANTIAGO DAVILA: He was pretty nice. He was, like, fun, and he was a little funny. Once I was struggling in math in first grade, and he helped me. Yeah, but second-grade math, you get to do multiplication, even more.
HAGHIGHI: And Meleia Anderson, who's an eighth grader at Orange Grove Middle School, says she attributes a lot of her success to teachers like Mr. Bindschadler.
MELEIA ANDERSON: When you can find a teacher like Mr. B., it not only makes me excited to go to school, but it makes me actually see the impact that I can have on my future - not only Mr. B., but all my science teachers, all my math teachers. I mean, just the drastic jump that I can have simply because they've decided to put effort into what they're doing, I think is going to be something that I'll take with me forever.
HAGHIGHI: For NPR News, I'm Noor Haghighi in Tucson.
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