Echoes and impacts of teaching critically: have you told a favorite teacher about how s/he impacted you?

Yesterday I got an email from a student I taught 10 years ago.  She took French from me in 9th grade when I was teaching at a private boarding school in the U.S.  I remember her well because she was bright, motivated, hard-working and I also taught her older brother.  I had run into her and her mom in a bookstore a few years ago when I was back visiting friends and it was wonderful to see her and get back in touch.  She was on her way to live and study in Jordan for the year.  Yesterday's email informed me that she was back in the states and got a job teaching Arabic at a high school in Massachussetts. 

As most of you can appreciate, it is so inspiring and motivating to find out that one of your best students has chosen to go into teaching.  As if that weren't enough, she also said to me: "You are among the best (approachable, consistent, encouraging and effective) language teachers I have had (and I have had many by now).  Though I would like to request your advice on a general level, I am also hoping for something specific: your homework policy." Be-still my teacher's heart!! I tell you: those words alone make up for the late nights, the stress, the politics, and the meagre paychecks. I had to chuckle about the fact that she still remembered my HOMEWORK policy after all these years! I guess it was effective?

This doesn't happen to me very often since I don't live in the same country where I used to teach. I don't run into students by chance or see their parents in the grocery store.  I do have many of them as friends on Facebook and love to learn about their weddings, grad degrees, vacations and other such things.  But getting such an email out of the blue really touched my heart. I just had to share this joy with other educators who work hard every day to connect with their students in meaningful ways. We do this work in the hopes of having a lasting positive impact. Critical pedagogy is about making those deeper connections with students and inspiring them to think about the ways that they can make this world a better place. This student is really doing that: she studied Arabic and world religions, and left her rural 98% White American bubble to live and study in the middle east. She is such a smart, caring, and engaged person I have tremendous faith in her ability to work with youth and know that she is making this world a better place.

So now, I'm encouraging you to pay it forward: get back in touch with a teacher who had a positive impact on you (or your child).  Teachers so rarely get recognized in these ways and hearing from a student 5, 10, or 20 years later is so meaningful because it indicates that all your heart and soul that you poured into your school community did have a long-term positive impact on someone's life.  So, take a moment, look up that favorite teacher from 8th grade, or professor from your undergrad, or your child's best-remembered grade-school teacher.  Teachers need to be reminded about what we have done that worked and made someone else's life a little better.  Please post your memories or any reunion moments in the comments section below!

In case you are curious, I wrote back to her about my homework policy and described it as follows: