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SeeksOnlyOne -> remembering to be kind (2/14/2008 2:24:57 PM)
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this may be pulled, or may bore yall to tears.....but its an email i sent to my boss today, i have shared it with many friends, and decided to share it here.
i hope we can all remember to be kind(yes even you bad ass sadists too)[;)]
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i want to share something with you that happened today.
i went to take the special ed classes the little goodie bags we had put together for them. on the way back to the cafeteria, i stopped to look at some artwork and then saw some essays hanging outside the 5th grade room. typical stuff, my first bicycle ride, my first trip to disney land, etc etc.
the one title caught my eye. "the day my daddy died". and i thought how sad to not have a daddy when in the 5th grade. i started reading it, and the girl spoke of the day last year that she came home to find her mother crying, and learned that her daddy had been beaten unconscious by 4 men. she wrote about how much it hurt, seeing her mom so sad, how much it hurt her when her daddy died, how she felt so at home when they went to north carolina for the funeral and how she loved the family she got to see and be with up there. she talked about it quite matter of factly, which made it even sadder to me.
i think you know me well enough to know this ended with me standing in that hallway, tears running down my face, remembering when my aunt was murdered in 1998, and the utter sense of un-reality that came from it. the 2 that murdered my aunt were caught 5 days later and are now serving 2 life sentences, which gives us all as much a sense of closure as you cant get i guess.
the last sentence of her essay was "they are still looking for the men that killed my daddy". she doesnt have any closure, nor, i hope, any understanding of the mentality of a person who could take the life of another. she just has no daddy. she is a new kid at school, who i noticed something in her eyes from day 1, far from the family in north carolina for reasons i do not know.
i write all of this from home, tears flowing again cause i am a wimp, because it touched me so. i know i have to get better at the business aspect of management, and i am confident, in time, i will learn to do that. i figure out ways to do things almost daily that make me go duh! why didnt i think of that sooner. and i want to be a good manager.
but i hope all of us who work in the schools will realize the impact we can and do have on the lives of these children. i hope we never forget that we may be the only one who offers a kind word, a hug when they come in first thing in the am looking sad.
i hope we can remember it is just as easy to say sweetly the things we might want to just "snap" out to the students. whether it be becasue it is our nature to speak in that manner, or because it is the excellence of customer service that is demanded by our department.
i hope we can always remember that we do not know if that child that looks sad or distracted, or who forgot her fork or milk, may be just a dingbat kid who just doesnt care........or she may be clouded by grief on a bad day because she is missing her daddy really bad. i just hope we can always be kind, whether we think the child deserves it or not.
im not sure when the planning to back to school training begins, but if you see fit, i would love to see the humanity portion of our job get some type of mention.
sorry for the rambling rant, but this childs story touched me deeply.
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