"All you need is love"...I’d love to teach my students this but more importantly, model it by example. Instead, I far too often teach the laws of impersonal business-efficiency, deadlines, promotions, and consequences. Love becomes too costly, too taxing. Teach love on top of essay writing, reading comprehension, and critical thinking? I’m just one woman!
And then comes along just one woman who oozes love, even in the fails she stamps on her students’ papers. Her name is Scarlett and she has 3 beautiful children of her own, husband, in laws, and her own side of the family to take care of but that doesn’t exhaust her from being a maternal 6th grade teacher to her “brats and punks”. She cracks me up with an imitation of one student who likes to sludge around as if her feet were made out of lead. But I know she does it out of love. How do I know? Because she’s contemplating taking in that student as a foster child. That means sharing her home, her income, and sprouting some extra grey hairs over a student that she could easily banish from her thoughts come June. She took the biggest brat in her classroom and instead of viewing her as another burden to bear, as I’m sure many in her life already have, she took it upon herself to love her. That type of love-the ever multiplying kind-overwhelms me with its fearsome and magnificent strength.
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