Dear Teacher Who Jumps Hurdles,
My son’s Star Wars backpack has a frayed strap, as in, barely hanging on, but as any parent knows, it is way too late in the year to buy a new backpack. Hopefully, Luke Skywalker can hang on for ten more weeks. Hopefully, I can too.
Yesterday afternoon, I was emptying the contents of his backpack, which is always an adventure. No kidding, I once found a shriveled frog and a random chunk of cement. Boys are the best. I have learned to unzip slowly should a living creature or unbearable stench pop out unexpectedly.
For once, I was surprised in a pleasant way. Shoved under a stained hoodie and a half-eaten bag of Funyuns, I found a Ziploc bag with a brand new picture book, a game board complete with dice, and a parent letter.
My first thought upon locating the parent letter was, “Dear God, please tell me they are not sending him home again for me to teach.” Thankfully, that was not the case. The letter explained the literacy bag project was a school-wide K-2 initiative to promote reading at home. Promoting reading I could do. Teaching him all day, every day, for the rest of the year, I could not. The PTS(H)D (post traumatic stress homeschool disorder) is still very real.
Naturally, my son chose the rhyming game over the book. He lost royally, but that’s beside the point. The point is a school that hosts a parent involvement night every spring decided if COVID would not allow the parents to come to the literacy night, then they would bring the literacy night to the parents. This is the resiliency and dogged-determination that is hallmark of the best teachers I know.
When others see stop signs, they merely see hurdles and purpose in their hearts to find a way over or under them no matter the cost.
Each bag was carefully sorted, stuffed, and zipped with careful attention knowing full-well that some of the bags would very well end up back at school the next day, or the next, or even the next with only a gentle reminder for the kid to please give it to a parent.
This is the heartbeat of a teacher, which is really to say the heart of a giver. It’s an attitude that says, “You may reject me or push me aside, but you will never stop me from giving. I am too much of a believer in the difference it makes for “the one” to be disheartened by “the others.”
These are the people I choose to establish as my heroes in life. They are the ones who make me want to be a better person.
They are the ones who make me say, “How am I so lucky to share the same profession as these remarkable people?"
-CDB