THE FIRST DAY

Dear Spike:

Your mother came home from work today smiling.

This is not altogether unusual, except for one thing: Today was the first day of school — and your mom always comes home from the first day of school in tears.

You see, she cares — deeply, passionately, obsessively — about her students. And on the first day of the year she gets to know them all — the homeless, the war refugees, the undocumented immigrants, the ones that can't speak a lick of English, the ones whose parents have never bothered to read to them, the ones who don't know red from blue, the ones who can't write their first name and don't even know their last name.

Of course, even when she was teaching in the suburbs, she'd come home in tears. She would see road ahead (no matter where you teach, it's long and bumpy and has more than a few dangerous curves) and simply feel overwhelmed at the impending journey.

Something changed this year, though. All of those challenges are still there, but something about your mom is different. She's more confident. She's less afraid.

I'm sure that, in part, it is because last year was such a challenging year — a new school in the inner-city, with a class seemingly hand-picked to drive her out of the business. Despite the challenges, she succeeded. No, she thrived.

And in part, I think it's you. She still cares — deeply, passionately, obsessively. But she also knows that at the end of the day — even the first day — you'll be waiting at home to give her a hug and to tell her that you love her.

And who wouldn't smile about that?

Love,
dad

NEVER IN NOTHING

Dear Spike:

Your mother began the school year with a classroom of 25 students, many of whom didn't speak English and most of whom had never had a book read to them, much less ever owned one.

She fretted. She cried. She wondered whether she was the right teacher for the job.

But she didn't run away. She didn't say no. And when she was advised to simply treat her kindergarteners as pre-schoolers, she declined.

Yesterday, the students' test scores came in. Almost all of them are reading on grade level.

Winston Churchill said it best: "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in."

Love,
dad

BLESSED AND VENERABLE

Dear Spike:

Your mother is a saint.

That’s not a prerequisite of being a public school teacher, but it certainly helps, especially in a school like the one she began teaching in a few weeks ago — the school you’ll be attending in about five years.

Among her students are several Sudanese war refugees and a number of children with family members in prison — including one little girl whose older sister is in jail awaiting trial on charges that she tortured and murdered their brother. There’s another girl whose mother is severely mentally retarded (that mom, by the way, was the only parent who showed up for back-to-school parent-teacher conferences,) several students who don’t know a word of English (and a majority who are still learning English as a second language) and a couple of children whose teeth are so rotten that it makes me wince when I see them smile. All but one of them get free lunch at school and several of them eat all three squares, each day, in the school cafeteria.

Most of them put on brave faces. But they’re troubled. And that often makes them trouble.

It’s heartbreaking. And hard. I wouldn’t last 10 minutes if I had to teach her class. But your mom does it all day long — breaking only for a few short minutes, during lunch, to feed you.

See? A saint.

We had dinner this evening with your mom’s teaching aide, Sue (actually she’s more like a partner, than an aide — and she’s a saint too) and Sue’s husband, Rob, who teaches English at a high school in the most crime-ridden district of Los Angeles. The first week he worked there, he remembered, one of his students was shot in the stomach after first being threatened during his class. Understandably, he wondered whether he’d made a mistake leaving Utah. But he’s been flying down to L.A. — leaving his wife, his home and his two beautiful dogs for months at a time — for seven years now.

Yup. Saints.

I’ve always felt like I had an important job — Tocqueville called freedom of the press “the constitutive element of liberty” (and since you can’t have freedom of the press without the press, I suppose that makes hacks like me kind of worthwhile.)

But I felt small sitting at a table with these people. Absolutely tiny. Miniscule. Subatomic. Quarkian, even. I mean, Jesus, what good is the press to an illiterate nation?

Catholics believe that saints are blessed and venerable people who, in the course of a lifetime, perform at least three miracles.

Heck, your mom does that every day.

She doesn’t just teach children to read, she teaches them to be. To have compassion. To have respect. To have hope.

She changes their lives. And in doing so, I’m convinced, she saves lives too.

Someday, somebody’s going to ask you who your heroes are. And I’m not ever going to tell you what to think, what to believe or what to say, but I’ll tell you who my hero is:

Your mother, the saint.

She’s my hero. My absolute, unequivocal hero.

Love,
dad