Many memes circulate online about teachers and the vital work they do. These quotes are often praising and philosophical about how teachers inspire and impact others; for instance, Henry B Adams wrote, ‘A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.’ An anonymous viral quote - which my mother shared with me this week - speaks to the generosity of the profession: ‘Teachers don’t teach for the income. They teach for the outcome.’ I cherish a wallet flashlight my father once gave me which reads, ‘Teachers plant the seeds that help us bloom forever.’

One meme lately stuck in my mind is a saying credited to revolutionary Turkish statesman Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: ‘A good teacher is like a candle — it consumes itself to light the way for others.’ The simile is also attributed to Italian poet Giovanni Ruffini (1807-1881) - but a website called Quote Investigator finds that it first appears in a 1764 textbook titled A Complete English Grammar on a New Plan by Charles Wiseman, and that a number of other 19th and 20th century sources also make use of the trope in various forms. A Google search for the phrase ‘a teacher is like a candle’ finds myriad images of the saying, decorated with drawings and pictures of lit candles. For what is lovelier or more noble than a candle and its little flame, enlightening others while it burns itself out?

I think of all that teachers are doing and have done in the pandemic to light the way through it, and I offer in response - to their efforts and to this meme - that there is a danger in signalling the virtue of burnout in any profession, but particularly in one requiring this special kind of light to be given so generously and so continuously over time, to the benefit of students and broader society. Teacher wellbeing is as vital as the role teachers perform. Self-sacrifice is unsustainable. The light needs fuel.