December 13, 2010

Love of Children

Written by: Adam Knight, CITC Language Arts Teacher, West High School

The mug steamed between my fists. Coffeecoffeecoffee. I lingered over Sunday morning, watching to see who would arrive first - nuthatches to the sunflower seed, a woodpecker to the suet perhaps, or waxwings to the mountain ash. I waited with my phone on the railing beside me, camera running and thought I should use it instead to call my parents across the country while I waited for the sun to make its hesitant appearance for a few hours. Clouds hung overhead. It had warmed up almost enough to snow. I might not see the sun at all, and the front might keep any birds at roost for the day. A flock of waxwings wheeled high overhead trilling their “sreeeeeee sreeeeeee sreeeeeeee,” and the yard went quiet again.

The phone let out a “pop” with a Facebook notice. I pulled open the site to find a note labeled with a name I had to think about just a second too long before, with equal parts honor and trepidation, I placed it with the face of a student from last year. In recent years, on each first day of school I announce to my students that I will not accept their friend requests. I have had a handful make the gesture over the years since the advent of Facebook, but besides being ASD policy, propriety dictates that they go ignored. I looked for a friend request. There was none attached. I went inside to the computer and opened this message. I have changed or removed any names and geographic reference out of respect for the individual.

“Hi Mr. Knight, hopefully this is the right person I am sending this too, but I just wanted to say, Thank you for being my teacher. I really appreciate it. I know I wasn't really able to say a real good bye, on the last day of school. It's been really rough lately, my mom has passed away, my father is in jail, and my brother has left. My father has gone out of jail now tho, and says he will change. I hardly believe it.. I'm currently living at my house with a friend who's been taking care of me. But I've dropped out of High School, cause of my failing grades this year. And now is attending to some downtown class with a guy named Michael. It's different trying to pass is hard, never wanting to go to school. But I wanted to tell you thank you for everything, I know that you being a teacher for our class was hard, coming to school and being treated like s***. ( well that's from my view ). We were able to have some fun days in the class though. But I'm glad I was able to be one of your students, I'm very happy to of had a awesome teacher, who I can talk to. Thank you for everything.

Love,

Me

P.S... I'm not gunna correct anything in this message :P”

When finally I worked together words to reply, I told her I was glad she hadn’t corrected anything. She needs to be heard just as she is. This is a story on the value of children as I experienced it on the morning of Sunday, 2 December 2010.