Dear Miss Christians

Every year during the first week of school, I get a letter from every one of my students. 

This is my favorite. 

I make them do it...it's not of their own volition...but it is a very good start to the year.  They sit at their desks, and shake out the stiff summer handwriting and write furiously for a little while and tell me interesting things. 

I sit back and learn about these people, and marvel at their creativity and thoughtfulness and honesty and self showing up on the page.  They tell me what they are scared about sometimes, and also what they love.  I keep these all year and then give them back to them in June.  And in June they are very different people.  So the letter marks a lot. 




In June some of them tell me that they are embarrassed, but I tell them not to be.  We are our own worst critics, I say, and I loved reading those letters in September.  I am always very endeared to their September selves. 

I remember writing a blog post last year about the 8th graders and their confidence and the life I saw in them. Similar things could be said about students this year as well.  And by that I mean the 7th graders too.  I told them I would not say too much about what they wrote...teachers should keep lots of confidences...but in general I will say that it's a very good year for 'what if' and reckoning and the middle ground. 

I feel excited about these souls going out into the world someday, living the way they are supposed to live, and privileged to spend time in the meantime with them now.  Yes, there are lots of hormones.  LOTS.  But that is not all these people are at all.   

This is of course, the Anne Shirley idealism coming out in me.  And in the fatigue of February this buoyancy may even be laughable.  But I don't think that's so bad in the end. 

I will have moments of confrontation and sheer and utter frustration with some of these people.   This is no longer too scary for me.  It takes lots of fortitude and prayer, but now I know I can do it.   

More than that, I will also watch these people grow up in their lives.  How they will push themselves and do well and fall on their face a little too.   They will make me laugh.  And sometimes, later, when I am not teaching, some of the sad things I see them experience will make me cry for them too.  You can partition yourself into a profession, but you choose teaching and you are choosing humanity too.  Each year I learn a little more to keep things tight but leave a little breathing room in the classroom, in the lesson plan, in the silence, for them to astonish me.   

And this year I can tell I will not be disappointed.