Kimberly Blanton sent this to me. She wrote:
“I am a former Boston Globe/ Economist reporter who now writes a blog at a Boston College think tank. I recently met and fell in love with a teacher. I am so amazed at how hard he works for his students, and I am even more puzzled by why teachers have become so vilified.”
Now, if only all the editorial writers and pundits had a real teacher in their lives–a parent, a sister or brother, a child, a beloved–the world’s view of teachers and education would change!
Love Letter to a School Teacher
The man who entered my life like a whirlwind, wooing me on Valentine’s Day with a sculpture of lovebirds swinging on a heart that he’d made from balloons, is now applying his handiwork to preparindg his Boston high school classroom for the new school year.
It’s the Saturday before Labor Day, when America is enjoying its last vacation of the summer, and he’s operating a power drill as he installs whiteboard, paid for out of his own pocket, on top of the antiquated chalk board in the room where he’ll soon begin teaching sophomore biology. Having decided he cannot tolerate another year of chalky, gritty hands, he’s fashioned a less-than-satisfactory solution in a public school system that has no resources for modern educational equipment. He’d already gotten a start earlier in the week on cleaning the room but has more to do before classes begin this week.
Since when, I wondered, did our teachers have to stand in as maintenance staff? The first thought to strike me as I walked into this grand old limestone building with its dingy walls and dysfunctional windows is that all the talk about public education being our top national priority is not genuine.
In this high school, it appears that the walls haven’t been painted in many years, even though a fresh coat of paint is a relatively inexpensive way to inject excitement into a tired old building. To me, the walls speak to the lack of care for the children in urban schools. The vast majority of students in my partner’s high school are recent immigrants, are economically disadvantaged, or have special needs.
Constructed in 1929, this beautiful old building speaks to our once-high aspirations for public education. Now, its tall windows must be propped open with two-by-fours and food crates. There is no air conditioning, and my partner loathes those sweltering September days when the slits in the windows bring no relief to his third-floor classroom. As the temperature rises above 85 degrees, he sweats out his lessons on evolution and methods of scientific inquiry in front of sleep-deprived teenagers also struggling in the heat.
Like many teachers, he entered the profession to make a difference in individual lives, in the Boston community, maybe the world. It is his 26-year commitment to teaching and to improving the lives of children of the working class that I fell in love with first. As the new school year kicks into gear, I’m remembering the care he took the previous spring – our first together – to find new ways to reach his students. There seems to be little appreciation in our culture for the challenges of conveying the wonders of bacteria, nutrition, genetics, and the workings of the digestive system to inner-city teenagers who may have more pressing concerns – these and other subjects are so abstract and removed from the worlds they live in.
The television that almost seems to dangle from his classroom ceiling tells another story of the history of U.S. public education. Installed in the late 1980s, it was a gift from a television station, given on the condition that students watch a 10-minute news program every morning, three minutes of which were candy and fast-food commercials. The television hasn’t worked for years. That’s probably a good thing. Today, corporate America has moved on. Via grants through their foundations, major corporations now funnel their efforts and money into charter schools, which typically employ non-union teachers.
Now that my partner has solved the chalk board problem, his next maintenance project will be to devise storage in his classroom. The two small bookshelves holding battered biology textbooks were probably part of the original construction. He needs a better place for his students to store the notebooks they’ll use throughout the year to save and organize their assignments.
If only the rest of the country were as committed as he is to teaching our children well.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you so much for sharing your appreciation for teachers’ dedication despite overwhelming obstacles. Your validation from the private sector is vital in changing teachers’ villified status. I wish every single citizen would read your letter.
People who have parents or partners who are or were teachers get it.
Yes! They feel the sacrifices teachers make most acutely.
This is beautiful. It was a joy to read.
Thank you for making my day!
This letter articulates the old teaching-as-labor-of-love cliche from a fresh, much-needed perspective.
And, the literal labors in the story underscore the emotional labor involved in fighting for public education . Thank you, Kimberly and Diane!
Kimberly –
I recently retired after 36 years in the classroom in BPS, and my husband (also retired) spent 32. We met and fell in love while teaching middle school in Boston – our passion for teaching and for our students occupied so much of our time that it just spilled over into the rest of our lives!
I served in 5 schools under 12 principals and 13 superintendents. Each new school year began just as you described. By the time my own kids were 4 or 5, they went to school with us in the last days of summer to help us clean, paint, move furniture, retrieve books from storage areas and then went shopping for supplies for our classrooms.
Your former employer has led the pack of baying hounds nipping at the heels of teachers in the Boston Public Schools for years. Thank you for countering the myth of the lazy, greedy public school teacher feeding at the trough of tax-payer munificence.
I learned a long time ago that work orders take years to complete. I paint and repair my own classroom furniture. I even leave tools in a desk drawer just in case something should fall apart during the school day. (It has happened.)