I want to write a letter of tribute to all the special teachers out there, who put everything they have and everything they are into doing all they can for their students. There is something to be said about the grades and lives of students and how greatly impacted they are depending on the teachers they have. The difference could be so huge. Teachers are taken for granted every day, they deserve so much more praise than what they get.
We owe you so many thank you's. I thank you for being so consistent in the classroom, even on days when you weren’t in high spirits but still spent the effort and time to teach a class. Thank you for taking the time to review our work, and for the times that you gave real and honest feedback to us even when we didn't think we needed it. I thank you for being so overly motivated, even when we have shown little or no interest in lectures by sleeping, texting, or talking.
It takes guts to do that, and I’m sure we don’t realize or acknowledge how much you have to sacrifice of yourself in order to teach us. Thank you for teaching us to dream and showing us our dreams aren’t so far away when all we have to do is work hard for them. Thank you to you, the teacher who spent countless hours working with students who didn't appreciate the efforts you put in for us. Thank you for spending extraneous amounts of time on each and every student who walks through your door. Thank you for holding us accountable, even when we fought it so hard. Thanks for saying "no" to us when we asked to skip lesson plans and have class outside instead. Yet, I thank you for in our final days together letting us say goodbye.
Letting us as a class get our chance to hear each other out and be excited for the journeys ahead of us. I don't know what I would have done without you. Thank you for letting me sit in your room when I was having a bad day. Thank you for all the books you suggested and the stories they told. Thank you for always being there , even after leaving the safety of high school. Thanks for never losing contact. Thanks for being less like a teacher and more like a mentor and friend.
Thank you for sharing things about yourself and helping us realize that our worlds aren't collapsing because of one grade or one break up. The world around us wasn't coming to an end because you provided a voice of reason that we didn't even know we needed to hear. Thank you for believing in us more than we believed in ourselves, just knowing that pushed us to do better. Thank you for this and for so much more.
