Teach your children well

A teacher can make or break a kid-they have power...power to influence,
power to inspire, power to destroy...

 

When we were kids, we didn't know we were from the poor side of town until some idiot pointed it out to us. When my sister had to stop taking clarinet lessons in school, the teacher called her a quitter. A quitter, huh? Yes, a quitter. Did he even give her a chance to tell him why?

 
Probably not; an idiot like that would never listen to a kid anyway. It was because of money that she had to "quit" playing an instrument that had become her very friend. She practiced and played until we were literally begging her to quit. But we didn't mean quit as in quitter,
 just knock it off for a few hours, huh?

Anyway, what the hell is wrong with someone who would crush a child like that? Only she knows the lasting effects of what his statement really did..

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But on the other hand, maybe the best thing that can happen to any little girl is to have an absolute angel for a first grade teacher! She was the prettiest, sweetest, most caring lady that we would ever meet and she would have a lifelong influence on two little sisters forever. She would inspire my sister to come home and play school with me and teach me everything she learned that day.

And then, when it came my turn to go to first grade, I was lucky enough to have her as my very own first grade teacher too! I remember See Jane Run, See Spot Run and being called on to read aloud in class. She looked at me as if I were already the best reader that she ever taught and I just knew that I could do it! I could read out loud! And I remember her kindness the day she noticed I didn't have any milk money and I was near tears and then she slipped a nickel into my hand...

She was my first role model of what a woman could be. She could work, be a wife and mother and really, really care about her students. She knew and counted it a privilege to be our teacher. She taught us the way she would have liked her own children to be taught. She was an influence, an inspiration, an ever lasting example that would bless the rest of our lives...

I knew that when I grew up, I wanted to be her...but I didn't become her...I became something else because in our family, college was never discussed. The very possibility was something only rich kids could think or dream of. But I still wanted to be her...My heart always knew that somehow, some way, some day I could achieve it.

I became a wife and a mother and later as an adult, a nurse and I finally went to college and I finally taught my patients many years later...I did not become her, but I did become me and I was kind, caring, and encouraging to those entrusted to my care, because she first taught me...

 Mrs Saltrick, I wish I could tell you in person what you meant to me. I believed you were my guardian angel because you were at almost EVERY school I went to. What were the chances that you would be at my middle and high school as well? You taught your children well..

There IS so much more to her story than words can tell...She was our Jr high school guidance counselor and she was also the guidance counselor where my daughters went to school!

She was at a restaurant where my daughter works and saw HER and asked her if she was MY daughter, she had radar for us...and then one day I was working as a nurse taking care of a couple and their last name was Saltrick  I came in extra that day, I was not supposed to be there and there she was! I felt like a 'first grader' again! I was so excited...to me it was like seeing a celebrity, because in my heart she will always be... as the Reader's Digest used to call "The most unforgettable character" I had ever met.

Just look at them and sigh, and know they love you