An Open Letter To The My Superpowered Teachers

Dear Teacher

I forgot to thank you along the way. I never told you how your superpowers changed my life.

I have spent a considerable amount of time pondering what superpower I would have if I could pick from the menu. Flight, strength, healing, spidey powers, teleportation and so many more.

Within that long list, there is a superpower that is reserved for a precious few. Teachers, like you, have a superpower and calling that rivals that of any superhero.

The power to reach inside someone's existance, and rewrite the history of their life is unrivaled.

This is a power of time and action that eludes the concept of past, present, and future describes a physics that has yet to be defined. In the present a teacher will act, to create a future that writes the life story of a person's past.

So to my Teachers let me share my story of you and how I hold it dear to my heart and my very life.

Mrs. C

In my mind, Mrs. C was old and mean, and she scared my little Grade 3 self. I have come to understand that most children at the age of 9, think everyone is old, however, I have talked to others that knew Mrs. C, she was old.

Mrs. C loved the read-aloud. She would move up and down the alphabetized isles and I would sit in fear as the train wreck slowly approached.

I had a list of strategies and tactics ready.

On one particular day I prepared the parrot, and for flavor, combined it with the cute and cuddly. My turn came up and I repeated the sentence the girl ahead of me read. I then stared up in my cutest face and smiled at Mrs.C.

She was patient that day! She told me to read the next sentence. I panicked, so I added in the dumb and just stared at her smiling away.

She was insistent that day! She directed me to the page and asked me to read aloud the next sentence. I pulled out cranky and shouted I had already read.

She was just mean that day! I got up screaming and flipped my desk to the corner of the room. That worked and out I went to the office.

I mopped down to the office, grumping the whole way about why she would not just me alone

Arriving in the office the school secretary Mrs. B greeted me. She was the kindest person ever. She made the observation it must be reading class again, I nodded with tears forming, she got me of those small little cartons of milk.

After school as I was slipping out the door and Mrs. C cornered me, directing me into the class. I told her I had to walk home, she insisted. She pulled out the damn book and slid it across directing me to read a line, I started hitting every strategy; stupid, angry, jumping up, yelling and nothing worked.

Mrs. C then pulled out her superpower.

“James, would you let me teach you to read?”

I wonder if you ever knew how you changed the trajectory and history of my life!

She would then work with me after school bit by bit working on understanding the alphabet and then simple words.

My List of Heros

I would then come to love school and the great people that dedicated their lives to helping write the histories of children.

I would meet many more heroes.

Librarian — I don’t actually know her name but I remember the magical moment of our meeting. I would be introduced to the library, a place I had avoided endlessly. Once I started to learn to read I could not get enough. She would handpick books for me and do something even more special. She let me take them home, I had to promise to return them, but she let ME take them home. She gave me the history of a library card that could always get a book, even in my poorest, and most trying times.

Mr. A — my grade 6 teacher. He pulled me aside one day and harshly said, James, you can barely write a sentence. No doubt did he not get the memo, I was still working on the reading piece. I would continue to struggle with writing, my entire life. He then followed it up by saying, but you can read, so read everything, anything, read until your eyes hurt. He would give me a book by Farley Mowat called Two Against the North. I would read that multiple times a year and had that copy long after the binding had fallen out and it was in tatters. He gave the history of becoming an endless reader.

Mr. R — my high school biology teacher. He had a love of biology and a passion that was infectious. His love of anatomy and physiology would carry me into a lifetime of histories. He would write a history that had me become a medic in the army, take biology as my undergrad, and eventually become a biology teacher. What a superpower!

Mr. B

Mr. B my junior high principal. He was tall, rough, and a frightening man. He would be witness to my slow slide into oblivion. He would suspend me from school, and he gave me the strap for messing up one day.

Eventually, he would expel me from school.

One day he found out I was struggling and had a suicide plan. He sat me down and told me I would show up every day in his office and he would teach me because I need to learn. I would take my math, science, social, and language arts with him.

I don't ever remember taking anything academic with him. I do remember him playing old western records and singing to them. I remember him playing chess with me. I remember him running with me. Mostly, I remember him talking with me and in that healing me.

At the end of the year, I wrote the final exams needed to get into high school. As one would expect I failed everyone one of them, except science. I am still proud of that.

He sat me down and broke the news to me. I recall telling him not to worry. Poor dumb kids don't go to high school and I had an incredible year. I told him I had a job at the local supermarket and would be fine.

Mr. B you were a tough man. I saw you crack when I said that.

He said that exam marks are only part of my final mark, there is a class mark and as my teacher, he would assign it. I got to high school.

I never got to thank you for the hours spent on a kid that did not deserve it, and changed the history of his life.

Thank you

Teachers have a gift and rare superpower. They see a future that not even a child can see. They dedicate their lives to it for little money, seldom praise, and often much disrespect and abuse.

I am sure everyone can think of that one bad teacher. I can tell you of countless teachers, that did not eat lunch in a day, because they gave it away to a child. That gave a child a second chance, a third…a tenth.

I have seen a teacher hug a child to make them feel loved and safe as if the child was their own.

Real heroes don't wear capes, don’t hold basketballs on the cover of a magazine. They drag themselves out of school at the end of a long day, touting an armful of papers they will mark into the evening.

To the Teachers who made THE difference in my life, I owe my history to you!

I am sorry I am late in saying thank you. However,

Thank you

James