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The First Thing He Did Was Point Out The Classroom Cootie Detector
It was so wonderful to hear from you on my birthday. Facebook’s pretty great like that sometimes. It’s giving me the chance to tell you something I’ve wanted to say for twenty years: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
You are so much magic, in human form. Did you know that? Everything you’ve done matters. I came into your classroom a scared shell of a kid with her defenses on high, and I left ready to take on the world. Or at least sixth grade.
Do you remember how you read to us? You made time for us to sit on the rug and be read to, years after we stopped having story time at the library. You read to us on Friday afternoons, when our attention for the week had vanished. You read to us on Monday mornings when we needed extra time to turn our brains on.
In one year, you read us House of Dies Drear, which I only remembered years later, when I saw it on a library shelf and picked it up again. I couldn’t remember a thing about it except that you read it to us, which was enough to make me want to read it again. I’m glad I did. Maniac McGee aloud and taught a group of largely white fifth graders more about segregation than any textbook. You also read us Wayside School is Falling Down, and you never minded that I recited half…
