I feel good about yesterday - my Saturday reflection
Yesterday morning I am sitting in my classroom around 7:45 doing paperwork when GR, a senior to whom I taught AP Government when she was a sophomore, comes into my room with a huge goodie basket and and even bigger smile upon her face. I ask what's up and she tells me to read the card. Knowing I had written college recommendations for her, I asked if she had gotten in to college. Again she tells me to read the card. So I do.
Yes, she has gotten in. She applied early decision to Johns Hopkins University. My Masters in teaching is from Hopkins, so I wrote as an alumnus who understands the univiersity. She had applied early decision, and made it. She thanked me not only for the recommendation, but for having taught her, challenged her, supported her.
As I begin my Saturday morning reflection, I start with this because of its importance. It was supported when later in the day S, a junior whom I taught last year, came in to ask me for a recommendation for a summer program. That was also in the morning, during my planning period.
Those two events remind me of the words of Henry Adams,
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell, where his influence stops.”
It is upon this I reflect this morning.
Wise words from Elizabeth Warren
as quoted by Charles Blow in his NY TImes Column this morning, which has the title Bitter Politics of Envy?"and which I highly recommend.
Here are the relevant words:
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you. But, I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
Those words may not fit on a bumper sticker, although you could put her saying them into a 1 minute advertisement.
Words like these are why I am quite sure she will be the next Senator from Massachusetts.
Romney didn't grasp this when he ran for that same Senate seat in 1994, only to be taken apart on similar issues by Ted Kennedy.
Kennedy himself understood the truth of those words, which he is why he was such a passionate advocate for the least of those among us.
And maybe, maybe just maybe, a few more Democrats - like the President of the United States and the Senate Majority Leader - would do well to offer similar words?
Just saying. .