Dear Teachers:
This is to all of the teachers, professors, TA’s and anyone else who tried to teach me as a student in elementary school, middle school, high school, college, paralegal school or grad school.
Now that I teach middle school, I feel your pain, your pride, your disappointments, your fear and your amusement. I am sorry I talked while you were trying to teach me about genetics or the Enola Gay, or, more likely than not, for reading something other than the assigned materials. Please forgive me for being unmotivated and underachieving, for just wanting to turn in something that was just “good enough” and not always “my best”. I know now that you didn’t want perfection, you just wanted my best, whatever that might have been.
To my elementary school teachers, thank you a million times over for your patience and judgment. If it weren’t for you, I would probably have been pumped full of medications to calm and focus me. Instead, you allowed me to work at my own pace, even though that meant I finished the day’s work within an hour. Thank you for having the wisdom to know this was okay, and to just give me an open-ended pass to the library where I was able to sit quietly and calmly and read. It was your great judgment and experience, Miss Judy Mills, that provided me with this chance to stay out of trouble and delve into a million different worlds each day. Thank you to the Librarian, Miss Ida Williams-now-Thompson, who went to the middle school (which I now work at!) to check out books for me when I had surpassed the topical and reading levels of our own elementary school. As a teacher, I am not able to spot those kids who are too smart and plain bored in my classroom and I request that they be tested for gifted and talented programs, like Mrs. Dominic did for me in 2nd grade. I don’t let them off the hook for misbehaving, but I don’t write them off either. I have made them write sentence such as “I WILL NOT TALK DURING CLASS”, like the many sentences I had to write for Mrs. Childers in 3rd grade. I also credit her with my vast vocabulary, acquired by writing dictionary pages at lunch time for her, earned by my talking during class time. I even give lunch detention in the same fashion that Mrs. Dawkins and Mrs. Lorick gave it to me in 4th and 5th grade.
I remember that my students are just children who need to be taught proper behavior by someone, even if it’s me. I keep in mind that some of my kids come from poorer backgrounds and try not to make them feel small or inferior. I provide them with coats or shoes, pencils or paper. I keep in mind that like my grandmother, not all adults have had a positive experience with teachers and school, so I treat them with dignity and respect at all times when dealing with their children.
Many regards to the middle school teachers who tolerated me and all of my pubescent classmates as we struggled to get through this horrible age. School was in no way important to me then. All I cared about was not starting my period in Social Studies class, hanging out at Putt Putt and who was cute and who was going with whom. Forgive me once again, Mrs. Redmond, for calling you Medusa in a note I was passing to Patrice Murray, that Rhett Bigby got confiscated. I really didn’t mean and really felt bad. Thank you for accepting my apology then, and know that I learned more from that lesson than I did about science the entire time I was in 8th grade. I am sorry Mrs. Dicks that I joined in the foolish talk that your husband’s name was “Harry”. We were stupid and penis jokes were funny. Thank you Mrs. Smith for telling me to stop reading Where the Red Fern Grows before Old Dan saved Billy from the mountain lion, and even worse, when Little Ann dies of starvation at Old Dan’s grave. I sobbed like a baby that night and would have been mortified to have had that heaving, snotty nose bawl-fest in front of my classmantes. (I am tearing up just thinking about those last few pages of that amazing book!) Thank you to the principal I work for now who remembers me as one of his students at this middle school and hired me anyway.
A begrudging thanks to those teachers at Dreher High School who tried to motivate me to stay in the Honors classes, and were disappointed when I moved to College Prep because it was easier and required little to no work on my part. You were right. There I said it. I DID need to be in those classes. I didn’t know how to study in the most effective manner when I started college. Thank you Mrs. Cauthen and Mrs. Gilmore for putting up with my pretentious reading habits and refusal to read assigned materials that I was uninterested in. Now when my students tell me how stupid or boring some story is, I am getting what I deserve. While I never would have blatantly said this, I often thought it and just passive aggressively refused to read. Luckily, most of you summarized so well, that I never had to. Mrs. Gilmore, thank you for making me read A Separate Peace and The Catcher In the Rye. However, I can never forgive you for Red Badge of Courage. Thank you to the teachers who refrained from writing me up on a referral when I talked too much, and instead sent me to guidance, where I was put to work utilizing my office skills I had learned in my after-school job. Now, when my student will just not shut up, I don’t write them up. I find an alternative method of redirecting their energies. Or I do as you did, and send them to someone else. Thank you to Klein who forced me to show respect and didn’t allow me to call teachers by their first names, even if I knew them on a different level (like at my church). Now, I tell my students, “When you have a college degree, I will be Kim to you. Then we are equals. Now, and until then, we are not.” I am sorry, Mrs. Masdonati for arguing with you and telling I would never need to know the formula for measuring my headlight on my car because I could just take it to NAPA for the part (even though I was right, and that’s exactly what I do now.) But don’t fret Math teachers, I DID learn some algebra, and more than a little geometry, and I am amazed every time I help a student with their math homework and actually know what I am doing and get the answer correct!
My poor, poor college professors. I know you cared less about how I did in your classes, but I also know, as an educator, you just can’t help but wish some of us would work a little harder – at least to our potential. Thank you most of all to Dr. C. C. Hunt for her sarcasm, wit and enormous book collection to all three of which I strive to meet or surpass on a daily basis. I can only blame it on falling in love, working, and really just wanting to have fun. Thank you to Dr. Anna Katona for being such an inflexible, unyielding bitch, so that I could have an example of now I DIDN’T want to teach or treat students. I don’t really regret it, but I promise, that phase is over, and I am a stellar A student now.
Joe Mallini, I am NOT sorry I argued and debated the issues of law with you on a near-daily basis! It made the classes invigorating and informative for me. I only regret that you aren’t around any more and won’t be able to say I told you so, when I finally go to law school. Phil Mace, I am not sure how I learned a bit in your class, given your flaky, disjointed, absent-minded professor method of teaching, but to this day I think I learned more in Family Law than maybe any class except Wills, Trust and Probate.
As for grad school, thank you Linda Hall for helping me realize that as an educator and female leader, it is my duty to influence practice, procedure, administration and laws surrounding the education of our children.
So, to all of you who had a hand in The Education of Little Me, Thanks. I haven’t forgotten what a pain in the ass I know I was. So just know that I am getting my just desserts when my students who are BRILLIANT, but infamously LAZY refuse to work. Know that I haven’t forgotten the punishments, rewards, equalities and inequalities meted out any of you, and that I use them daily.
Those of you who deal with or interact with children, please remember that they are watching everything you do and say and are absorbing and processing it all to use in their own “tool kit” for survival as adults. Be firm, be gentle, be amused, be forgiving, be flexible, be fair, be just, be available, be there.
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