Dear Teachers of my kids,
First I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for what has been a great year beyond our every expectation. Thank you for discussing important things and your willingness too to chat about the seemingly less important things. Thank you for your love of teaching, your love of my children, your interest in all they brought to your classroom and your seemingly unending level of patience for expressing and extending that love and interest over the course of an entire day to a room full of kids. I thank you for your embracing of all that they are; the good, the bad and the not so very pretty sometimes. And for your physical embraces too which I know have been forbidden or at least discouraged in too many schools these days.
This year my own kids have come home so full of all they have learned from you - from the books and lessons you brought their way and from the other lessons too that have absolutely nothing to do with books. Your tolerance levels and your teaching of tolerance through your words and actions. Your ability to prioritize on a real life basis without making the rulebook the guiding force. Your joyfulness about so much of it and the way you really showed it on a pure and authentic level. The way you truly got them - on an individual basis - and the way you shined a new light on them and allowed me to see them in a new light too.
I don't know whether all the kids came home feeling as full up as my kids have this year, but if it's true, if an entire classroom of kids can be made to feel as special as you have made my kids feel, then you are truly of another species. And you have definitely chosen the right profession. Because it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that it is a gift that you have. And a rare one at that.
We will miss you next year as we begin in a new room with a new set of kids and a new teacher at the helm. I'm sure we will have some good times ahead but I know too that we will never have another this year. And this year will truly go down in our family record books as one of the best school year's ever. Not so much for grades earned, or accomplishments measured, although there was surely a lot of that too, but because my kids, and me too, really fell in love with you as a teacher and as a person too.
We wish you a happy and easy summer. And we hope this year has been as good for you as it was for us.
Much love,
Bernadette and family
