A Letter to My Teacher
By Lester Laminack and Susan James
Editors Note: During teacher appreciation week, we bring you an invitation to pay Particular attention to teachers leaving the profession after a lifetime of service.
Social media, like sunlight and shadows, can bring light to a topic or cast an idea into darkness. A recent post on Lester’s Facebook page brought an idea, a shared feeling, into the light:
“I love that we are honoring all those young people who are missing the joys of their senior year. What can we do to celebrate those teachers who have devoted decades to our profession and are retiring this year? I ache for them not having closure on their careers.”
Not long after this posted, a flurry of replies took over his Facebook feed. One teacher replied, “Thank you, friend. It is such a sad thing. Being a teacher is who I am. All of my 41 years have been in a classroom — 34 of those in the first grade, 6 in Kindergarten, and 1 year of 3rd. I left school on the 12th of March at noon…I never got to give them that hug that I do at the end of each day. I appreciate this thread thinking of those of us leaving at such difficult times…” Many individuals who have retiring educator friends or colleagues also chimed in, “Hoping we can celebrate them in the future” and “Such an unsettling way to end a career.”
Unsettling. Yes, that was the feeling we both had as we volleyed ideas back and forth in messenger hoping to find some way to bring a bit of light to chase away the shadow of an unprecedented, abrupt, and traumatic ending to a school year. Neither of us could imagine ending a career of teaching in this way.
An idea came in the form of a book (as so many ideas do). Susan was gifted a copy of Deborah Hopkinson’s book, A Letter to My Teacher. It rests on her coffee table, a memento of her time with fifty teachers in an NWP Summer Invitational Institute who presented her with the book along with letters from each of them. Just a few days before Lester’s post, Susan’s daughter lamented the fact that this was the ONE year she did not want to miss. She loved 6 out of 6 teachers (can’t do better than 100%), and she could not believe she would not see them again. “Mom, this is depressing.” That memento resting on Susan’s table spoke to her, and she suggested that her daughter take time to hand write letters to each teacher.
The volley of messages bouncing between us brought that conversation out of the shadows and into full light. Letters! Letters from students for those teachers who are retiring this year. Yes. Words — stories, poems, letters — can bring light to darkness, and it is here that we need your help.
This month, we celebrate teachers. This week is Teacher Appreciation week, and in the weeks that follow many illustrious careers could wind down in the shadows. Consider all those years of planning and instruction, organizing classrooms and creating community, reading and discussing great books, telling stories and building strong and confident humans ending with something as distant and disconnected as a final on-screen meeting. One of our colleagues gave words to our feelings, “you love it and are enjoying it…it just shuts off and you never know how it ends…”.
Friends, let’s make Teacher Appreciation Week 2020 and these final weeks of school special and memorable in an unprecedented way. Let’s work together — administrators, teachers, parents, and students — to write letters of appreciation to teachers who are retiring, those who have devoted a lifetime and have done so much for us.
