For My Teacher Friends…

Once again I was reading, as I love to do, and I found this, from Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Novel, that made me think of all my friends who teach and who have taught. Especially since school will soon be starting back after the long Christmas break. Mma Ramotswe, the main character and detective is at a parent conference with the teachers of her foster children. Here is the part, Mma’s reflection on a moment that stopped me, “The teacher fiddled with a piece of paper. Looking after thirty children meant that you gave thirty hostages to fortune. A parent’s heart may be broken once, maybe twice or thrice: as a teacher your heart could be broken thirty times.” And further on Mma Ramotswe considers all the hardships and disappointments life can deal out and how we cannot protect children in the future. “All we could do was to give them that one thing that they could use to protect themselves from all that. At least we could do that. That thing was love, of course.”

Teachers, parents, and all who play a part in the lives of children, I salute you and thank you too.