I got a letter today.

Just when you are so frazzled that you wonder why on earth you ever chose this profession and you are sure you are making absolutely NO impact whatsoever, something just seems to pop up out of the flotsam and jetsam of the school day and lands on your desk amid the stacks of ungraded papers, proof sheets for the yearbook and the broken pencils you took away from those two boys who were “pencil fighting.” 

In our advisory classes, we are working on the art of composing a letter.  You know, the kind with the writer's name and address, inside address block, and proper paragraph structure?  The kids were to be writing to a local benefactor, thanking him for donating dice to our school for use in math games (well, this is Nevada, after all).  Instead, neatly folded amid the chaos of my desk I found: 

Dear Ms. T,   

I'm writing to you because you are a good teacher and you say happy birthday to me and I'm sorry for what hapend yesterday.  But Ms. T thank you for teaching me and being good to me.  

Sincerely,CH 

Now CH, isn't just any student.  He is one of the nearly 36% of Hispanic second language learners in our school so his spelling and grammar are, frankly, excellent for the short time he's been here: less than a year.  His father is in jail for beating up his mother.  His father forced him to hold his mother down while he beat her.  And his “friends” played a new version of the birthday game with him: they slugged him in the face, as hard as they could – once for each year of his age. 

This is a time bomb child.  He’s the quiet, shy one you never suspect might act out.  

And what did I do to deserve such a sweet letter?  I wished him a happy birthday and told him I was so sorry for what had happened on the playground.  I tried to fix a broken chain he was wearing.  I say hello to him each morning and, “Have a great day,” as he leaves my room to venture to his other classes each day.  In short, I didn’t do much.  Which just goes to prove that even the smallest touch of concern can keep a child or an adult from drowning.  In the hustle that is the school day – five classes, a half hour for lunch and three minutes between classes it is easy to forget to extend your heart as well as your intellect.   It's easy to forget that kindness needs to be intentional as well as random. 

So, I’m writing this to remind myself that there is one overriding reason I went into teaching.   

His name is CH.