why I teach - a message from a former student
can be explained in part by an email I just received. The student sending it just graduated from an elite law school. When he left our high school in 2004 it was to major in music. He had been a sometimes indifferent student in high school. I taught him twice, as a freshman and again as an upper classman (I think his senior year).
He was cleaning out his parents house in Maryland, came across a notebook he had kept in that freshman government class and sat down and wrote me.
I am going to edit what he sent me to protect his privacy, offering only a few key parts.
Henry Adams once wrote that A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. That can be for ill or for good. This letter reminds me of that fact.
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