Gifts

It's been quite a spring for me, as teacher. The world of education has been truly up in arms. There has been protesting and letter writing and facebooking and phone call campaigns, all trying to make education a financial priority and teaching a profession to respect within the circles of power across the country.

In the middle of all of this I was asked to take on two projects for my daughters' school. The first project was to put together a memory book for a 4th-6th grade teacher who was retiring after 43 years of teaching. My job was to take stories that former students posted to facebook and combine them with pictures into a digital scrapbook. Within minutes of agreeing to take on that project I was asked to do the program for the 1st-3rd grade play. That project involved interviewing each and every one of 74 cast members.

For a moment, and then again at various times, I was overwhelmed by what I had agreed to do. I took these projects on at the time of year when the responsibilities for my own classroom are immense. What was I thinking?!

I have never been so grateful that I agreed to do something crazy. Both of those projects turned out to be much greater gifts to me than I was to them. As I interviewed each little kid about why they liked being in the play, what they liked to do for fun and who they would like to thank for helping them out in life, I was reminded of the person that each student is. Each person in my classroom, in every classroom, is a little, and sometimes not so little, person in his or her own right. Each one of them is someone's daughter, son, grandchild, friend. None of them is a reading score or a math score. They are lovers of games and books, of music and tricks. They loved being in the play because they got to express themselves, to sing, to show emotion, to pretend to be someone else. Most of them gave thanks to their family members, but a few gave thanks to their teachers. One little girl said, "I'd like to thank Mrs. Hall for having me in her class. She's a good teacher because she sounds like a teacher and she works good like a teacher should."

I wonder what she'll be saying about her teachers 43 years from now. I might have gotten a peek at that future. I was born the year Mr. Huyser started teaching, so as I prepared the memory book, I read stories from many people who are my age. They were thinking back over almost a whole life time, and what do they remember? They do remember a few things that they were taught. They remember that they had to learn to do their times table in two minutes or less, and be able to name all 50 states. A few mentioned books that Mr. H. read to them. But that's about it. What I read was page after page of memories of places they went and adventures they had bike riding, camping, dog sled races. I also read about lessons learned in how to treat people and how to treat yourself. I read about how he touched them by believing in them when it seemed like no one else did. After 43 years or 15 years or 3 years, what they remembered was how he touched their hearts.

As I worked on these projects I frequently found myself in tears. Sometimes they were tears of laughter, "I'd like to thank Michael Jackson," one first grader said. Other times they were tears of sadness. Sadness because I saw Mr. Huyser's retirement as something bigger, the passing of an era. It seems the time for building, growing people of character, bright, unique humans has past into history. It feels to me that my job now is to create workers, cogs, efficient producers of goods and services.

Sometimes though, I cried because I was inspired and touched. I was so inspired by the stories of the past generation and the thoughts of the current generation, that I welled up frequently as I worked. At 16 years into teaching I needed to be reminded of what's important. I may have been given a very different job to do than teachers of 40 years ago, but nothing and no one can stop me from being a good teacher. No one can stop me from treating children in a way that they will still remember 43 years from now how they felt in my class and how they were taught to treat others. No one can stop me from believing in each and every kid regardless of how she looks on paper. I don't need anyone in the circles of power to value what I do in order for it to make a difference in the circles that really matter.