At one point, we all ended up with a teacher that confused us, did we not?
Maybe I should speak for myself.
I have wondered since the moment I met her, as an 8-year-old, why my second-grade teacher decided to teach young children. Perhaps a career with fully-formed adults would have been more her speed?
She seemed to absolutely loathe her life during school hours, and I can’t speak to non-school hours, because seeing your teacher outside of school is illegal, I think.
I was talking to a friend of mine that I still know from elementary school, and she was telling me she had the same experience! I knew it. I knew I wasn’t the only one that felt like Ms. X hated us. Except, to my shock, she felt that about a teacher I happened to love during my time at that school.
So wait a minute, each of us is having a unique experience, even when we do it together in the same classroom?
And what one person experiences as difficult another may not notice at all?
And then I realized why my second-grade teacher decided to teach second grade: because I needed her. There may have been other reasons, but I was absolutely, positively, one of them.
She was in my life with that attitude toward me because I needed her to be. She was in my life to make me feel uncomfortable. I needed the experience. I needed a reminder I would never forget. I needed the understanding that my feelings about something or someone aren’t about them; they’re about me. That experience was tailor-made for my growth, and that particular age was growing me a lot in ways I’m just beginning to understand.
My second-grade teacher was placed in my life so that at age 42, I could have this tangible understanding and example of my thoughts, creating my reality in my life as early as I can remember thinking.
And that makes me feel gratitude for that time she put a piece of tape down my desk between me and the cute boy I had a crush on. And it makes me feel excited to go back and find my little second-grade self and tell her the truth: your teacher didn’t hate you; she is doing you a favor you’ll never forget; you just can’t see it yet.
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