Open Letter to my Students
Dear Students,
I am writing you here because I know that I don’t always have the time or space to share my heart with you in the classroom. So maybe a few of you will stumble upon this letter and read it.
There are some truths about teachers and education that I want to share with you.
We love you.
We are not out to get you. We didn’t become teachers to torture children, I promise! We are not your enemies. We became teachers because we love teaching, and we love YOU. We want to help you become the best person you can be! We want you to succeed in school. We want you to pass our classes and be ready for the next grade. But more than that, we want you to be ready for your future. We know how challenging adulting and the real world can be, and we want you to be as prepared as possible. When we hold you accountable for walking through the school hallways (instead of running and jumping), abiding by a school dress code, speaking to adults and each other with respect and kind words, and turning your work in on time, we are helping you practice for some of the roles you will play in adulthood: safe drivers, respectable employees, responsible taxpayers—good citizens.
We are human.
We do not live in our classrooms. We’re not robots who shut off as soon as all children have left the building. We have lives outside of school. When we finish our work days, we sponsor clubs, coach sports, work second jobs, pick up our own children from school, go home to cook dinner, help with homework, and read with our own kids. When you email us at 9:34pm, we might not see or respond to that email until the next work day.
We also have feelings. When you moan and groan because we give you an assignment (which we have most likely worked really hard to plan and make as engaging as possible), or when you tell us you hate what we’re teaching, it hurts us. Deeply.
There are also some truths about the subject area that I teach that I want you to understand.
Reading and Writing are the most important things you will ever learn how to do.
Yes, I know that reading and writing are hard. Many of you hate one or the other, or even both. But these are the two skills that you will learn in school that are THE MOST IMPORTANT. More important than Math. More important than Science. More important than History (but that’s a close second). In fact, if you can read and write, you will automatically be more successful in all of those other subject areas! You will not be able to do much in this world if you can’t read or write. Writing is communication. And both reading and writing require you to think. That’s probably why they’re so hard! Many of you just don’t want to think. You want information and answers to be handed to you or jump off the page. But that doesn’t help you think. Reading and writing teach you how to think.
Besides the fact that good stories can allow your brain to escape your world for an hour or two, they can teach you about life. You can learn about people and what makes them tick, how to solve problems, and the kind of person you want to become. I teach you story structure because you can’t understand why people do the things they do without understanding their backgrounds. If you don’t understand the idea of rising action and climax, you might thing that life will always be headed toward disaster and that you will never have a chance to slow down to reflect and resolve life’s conflicts. If you don’t understand problem and solution, you won’t realize that there are solutions to the challenges you will face. You see, learning how to read and understand stories is learning how to live your life.
If you don’t learn how to read informational text, you’ll never be able to figure out how to cook from a recipe, get your driver’s license, or become the lawyer, game creator, or veterinarian you dream of becoming. There are forms and documents in adulthood, like job applications, contracts, tax forms, insurance claims, license applications, and wills that you will have to read and interpret, or you could mess up something that becomes life-altering. And yes, some of that stuff is boring, but guess what? There are a lot of things in life (like taxes and insurance) that are boring, but required.
If you don’t learn how to write, you’ll never be able to clearly articulate what you need or want. You won’t be able to respond over email to your boss or coworkers, and that could lead to serious misunderstandings. I teach you argumentative writing because it’s the most important type of writing you will use in life—if you can clearly and politely state your claims with convincing reasons and relevant evidence, it will be easier for you to get what you need and want. And sometimes, while researching those reasons and evidence, you’ll learn that what you want might not be what you really need.
Learning how to write is learning how to USE YOUR VOICE. And we desperately need you to use your voice. You are the decision-makers of the future! You have the power within you to help make this world a better place, or you can just sit back and let things continue to spiral out of control. My generation is putting our hope in you—that you can do a better job than we and our parents have at taking care of the Earth, managing our national debt, keeping inflation in check, ending racism, protecting human rights…all the things we continue to try to improve but struggle to accomplish.
So, students, when you look at your teachers and don’t always agree with the expectations we have or the work we give you, please remember these things. We teach because we love you, and YOU ARE OUR FUTURE.