Why I love teaching, reason #423

Can I tell you something?

I don't know why I'm asking. I'm going to tell you anyway, and you have no way of stopping me considering that by the time you're reading, I've already finished the post. So if your answer to the above question was, "no," you better stop reading . . . now.

For the rest of you, I'm telling you another story about school. Hope you like the school stories because there sure are lots of them.

When I student taught I was with an incredible teacher, Mrs. MC. She told me great stories about her kids, including stories about letters she received from her kids during the school year and after they'd had her.

I absolutely hate admitting this, but I had trouble really believing that that many kids would write notes. I don't know. I never wrote letters to my teachers when I was in high school. I wrote dumb notes, but nothing substantial.

I guess that just goes to illustrate that I was a bit of a careless and self-absorbed teenager. Yep. That's about right.

It took getting plugged in to my community in Wichita to discover the power of sincere and encouraging letters. I still remember my first one. I read it and just thought, "Wow. This person cares about me so much. I want to share that feeling with others. I want to give this feeling back to that person."

Then I started writing notes. I fell in love with it. I discovered that I want to write notes all the time. For encouragement, to thank people, to wish them good luck, to say congratulations, or just because.

Ok, so take these two things and add them together, like this:

skepticism about students writing letters + my love of notes and what they mean = astonished and thrilled to get my first, real letter from a student


This letter appeared on my desk during lunch, and reading it made my entire day. My entire week. Maybe my month. It was sincere, thoughtful, honest, and encouraging. It was the kind of thing that I would have written to someone.

I would write you some of the letter here, but I don't want to risk embarrassing the student. You'll just have to take my word for it.

But you usually do anyway.