Teacher of the Year.
My mom has to be the best teacher. Her compassion, creativity, and general human kindness are put together so beautifully as she patiently and perseveringly serves "her kids." She loves them, she gets to know them for who they are -- separate from the communities they have grown up in, separate from their past transgressions. She gets to know their hopes and fears and encourages them to be so much more than they believe they can. She laughs with them and dances in their joys and weeps with them in their sadness. She is a stable and constant source of love, wisdom, and acceptance amongst lives where anything stable is a commodity.
Miracle, Mir-Mir as we have grown to call her, is one of my mom's students. Because of my mom's love for her I almost find it more fitting to call her my sister. What a beautiful girl. She has been in my mom's class for a couple years now. I remember when my mom was teaching her to read. Now she writes me notes. She just gave birth to a beautiful sweet girl, Maryoanna Faith. Mom was there with her through it all. She is a proud new grandma.
My Mom is a Special Ed teacher at Central High school in Knoxville, Tennessee.
So sweet. I think we all have one or two teachers who were the ones that really cared and invested themselves into their students, and I know for me they have definitely helped make me who I am (for better or worse!).
ReplyDeleteKudos to your mom, if only there were more teachers like her!