TEACHERS AND STUDENTS

I used to teach First Grade. One day, I was giving the students directions for a writing assignment. I told them that this essay would be about a person whom they admired, someone who was important to them. We spoke of mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers. I ended my explanation and told them to begin. One student, who could be quite challenging at times, raised his hand. When I walked over to his desk, in a quiet voice, he asked, ‘Can I write about you?’ It’s those moments that make me stay.

— Melissa O'Connor, Sunrise, Florida

I am a kindergarten teacher, so I work with students of different reading abilities. One day, I was helping a student who was struggling to learn the letter sounds. We were practising the sounds using flashcards with letters and pictures. I showed him the letter S and a picture of a snake to emphasise the sound. SSS, snake. Next was the letter ‘C’. He couldn’t remember the sound, so I showed him a picture of a cat. When I asked him to tell me the sound of letter C, he looked puzzled and said, ‘Meow’.

— Aimee Ashby, McAllen, Texas

In one kindergarten class, there was a student named Billy who liked to pretend to be a cowboy. Every day, he came to school dressed in chaps, a vest and a cowboy hat. One morning, he excitedly told me that his mother was going to have a baby. ‘I’m going to teach my little brother all the things every cowboy should know, like how to ride a horse and rope a steer’, he exclaimed. ‘But’, I cautioned, ‘what if your mother gives you a baby sister?’ Billy hadn’t thought about that, and the possibility stunned him. He looked out the window for a moment before sadly saying, ‘Then I’m heading West’.

— John Cimics, Midland, Texas Adapted from Reader’s Digesa