To my future students,

First of all, I am so excited to be your teacher. I promise to honor you, hear you, and help you learn how to think, not what to think. I promise to do my best and notice if you're struggling. Everyone has those days, weeks, months, even years where they feel they just can't catch a break. It's so hard. But I am here for you, and we will get through this together. And we're not going to just try and survive until graduation, we're going to thrive beyond the band playing "Pomp and Circumstance". We're going to design a future for you.

I am so excited to hear your voice. I want to hear your questions. I want to hear what you have to say. I sincerely wish for you to have multiple people, especially grown-ups, in your life who also want to hear your voice. You are the only person who will ever see life behind your very own eyes. Your own thoughts, experiences, and knowledge, are all completely your own, and I want to help you explore it all.

I also promise you that my classroom will be actively anti-racist. I promise to have books by black authors and POC authors. I promise to have real conversations in my class. I promise to teach you and all your classmates that you have the ability to make the world a brighter and better place. I promise to have tough conversations in the classroom and to answer questions and also admit to you that I don't have all the answers, but we will explore and look for the answer, together.

I am so excited to meet you. I am excited to learn all about you and help you learn all about the world. The best teachers don't shove information down your throat and then throw a fit when you can't regurgitate it word for word. No. The best teachers help their students experience knowledge and ask them to think about the knowledge critically. If I just taught you the American Revolution and made you memorize the Declaration of Independence, you would forget it (unless you're a history buff like your teacher but that is beside the point). Let's read the documents together and talk about them. I want to hear you.

I hope that I am a teacher who guided you. When you look back on your education, I hope you saw our classroom as a safe place. A place where you could express your opinion, find a great book, or discover a passion you never knew existed. I hope that we keep in touch down the line, and I can hear all the amazing things that I know that you'll do. I am already so proud of you and everything you have and will accomplish.

Sincerely,

Your teacher