With the close of last school year, I completed my 30th campaign in education. Each of those years has been filled with joy and sorrow, challenges and successes, ups and downs and a ton of stories worth sharing. My (True) Life in Education Thus Far will detail 30 or so of those stories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed living (most) of them!
THE GENEROSITY OF FAMILIES
DECEMBER 21, 2022
Time-after-time, year-after-year, I have been stunned by the generosity of families.
In this work, I have met thousands of families of every shape, size and variety. I have had hundreds of family meetings, conferences and gatherings. I have spoken of parents as teachers’ best partners in the work of education and that is true.
I have been confronted by angry parents, concerned parents, off-the-wall parents. I have been shouted at. I have been ridiculed. I have been insulted.
I could share a series of stories about small traumas I have lived with parents. But why play into that stereotype? That is a very easy path to walk.
And a very narrow one.
The reality – in my experience – of families is that they are caring and concerned. They are trusting of the teachers of their students.
They are generous.
There have been so many instances of families giving of themselves, donating money and time and food and gifts to faculty and to the school. I can think of countless accounts of this kind of selflessness. To see families do this, over-and-over, year-after-year has been amazing.
I have been personally and individually affected by parent’s generosity.
There is an emblematic moment that stands out for me.
When I was going through a significant personal struggle that I thought I had hidden from students and their families, one of the girls in my class handed me a brand new satchel and said “my parents wanted you to have this.”
It was a lovely satchel. At the time, I had a briefcase I was using, so I set the gift aside. Returning to it months later, I noticed that the family had left some money in a pocket of the satchel for me. I was dumbfounded.
A decade in the future, I remain that way.
Families are deeply, deeply generous. I always want to remember this.