What Children Have Taught Me

education, nonfiction, , 35 Comments

When I was a teacher, I created a mailbox for each of my students on the bulletin board. It consisted of an envelope, decorated by each child, posted to the board. It was strictly for communication between the individual student and myself. As I taught high school, many of my colleagues doubted the efficacy of such an effort. They were wrong.

I would leave an innocuous note asking about their game the night before, or why their assignment was late, or just: “How is your day going?”

Some would write that were struggling to understand the assignment, or were too busy with extracurricular activities to give time to homework. Some, I would discover, arrived at class hungry and had trouble concentrating. (I started bringing snacks to school for those who needed them). 

The child who slumped in his chair every day, hair falling over face, wrote in response to my note asking if he was okay that his mother had left them and his dad was at work all day, so he was in charge of his younger siblings. 

The girl whose hair colour changed weekly, and whose absence outweighed her presence, wrote that her divorced mother’s current boyfriend was abusive. She didn’t know where to turn. 

Amazingly, every student participated. The first thing they’d do, upon entering the room, was check their mail. Many would write back and leave me a message to read later. Young people, it turned out, were much more inclined to reveal their circumstances via this mail system, then face to face. It opened the door for me to be a better teacher, and get those who needed it more help.

For my part, I learned never to take their behaviours personally. It was a reminder that these vulnerable young people came to class burdened by lives I would not normally see. 

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Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

35 thoughts on “What Children Have Taught Me”

  1. Pingback: What have you learned from your children? « America Learns

  3. You are such a brilliant, compassionate person! I love how you devised and employed this system. I’ve no doubt you sowed a lot of gratitude among these young people and sent their lives on a more positive trajectory.

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  4. This is genius. Everyone needs a sounding board, and you literally created one.
    It’s also easy to forget that you are not the center of everyone else’s lives, and the things they say and do are not in most cases personally aimed at you but have complex causes. Thanks for the reminder. (K)

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  8. I also really liked this post – a great idea. I taught high school briefly and met so many young women whose life outside of school was very difficult. Any way to encourage communication was a blessing for both of us. I would like to share this with my son who is teaching Grade 7/8 if that’s okay?

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  10. I absolutely love this post. What a great idea. I remember when I trained my kids to take the streetcar to school by accompanying them on a couple of trips, I saw a child the same age as my youngest (grade 4) taking the street car by herself and when she got off instead of crossing the street to go to school, she would stop in a pizza place and grab a slice. I remembered thinking, this is her breakfast.

    Thank you for sharing your story.

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    1. But what I meant to also say was that taking on (or not) somebody else’s emotions is very difficult to manage. It’s like you’re hovering between feeling empathy and trying to take some action to help another person and balancing that out with preserving your own emotional and mental health. What’s the answer? In action might lead to feeling guilty. Action might deplete your own bandwidth and leave you mentally or emotionally depleted…

      So difficult.

      Food for thought for one of my future posts. 😊

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      1. In working with the children, I felt this gave me a better chance at making a difference. Now, working with Ukrainians, I am discovering that is difficult to remain healthily detached. My daughter and I just had this conversation yesterday. How do I protect myself?

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  11. Connection is everything. I bet you made a huge impact in the lives of those students in ways you may not have seen at the time. It’s not the content they remember as much as the connections. Don’t we all want to be seen and heard?

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