As the new school year starts, scores of teachers enter the classroom to shape our children’s lives for the coming year and beyond. Some are fresh new teachers, and others return year after year. What keeps these teachers going?
Like farmers who patiently tend to their seeds and await the results, teachers keep trying to impart a positive influence on their students, even when the impact only unfolds years later. Unlike the farmer, sometimes they never even see the impact at all.
This video, debuted by the Menachem Education Foundation at this year’s 8th Annual Kinus Mechanchos Chabad, highlights six true stories of the impact that teachers have. The significance of these stories wasn’t immediately evident. Some of the teachers in these stories have never even heard them before. And these examples of a teacher’s impact are just a drop in the bucket of the myriad ways in which a teacher changes a child’s life for the better.
VIDEO:
This school year, let’s support our teachers who day by day, moment by moment, impact our children’s lives. And while these heroes and heroines, our Mechanchim and Mechanchos, are used to plugging away despite not seeing their impact, we can make their job easier and inspire them to keep going by thanking them for it.
When you do see how a teacher has brightened up your child’s day, or year, let them know. If you see that your teenager or adult child has built upon the foundations their Chinuch has given them to make positive choices, reach out with a thank you letter or email. Because a teacher’s influence is so all-encompassing, it’s often hard to draw the lines connecting specific interactions with a student’s improvements in Middos, Yiddishkeit, or throughout their life. But the connection is there, and it is up to us to notice it, point it out, and say thank you.
Thank you, Mechanchim and Mechanchos, for the difference you make. As a community, we wish you much hatzlacha in the coming school year, and may we all be zoche to see the fruits of your labor and true nachas from the children in your care.
