Unpayable Debt

This morning I found my kindergartner crying as she was getting ready for school. When I asked why she was weeping, she said:

"Today is the last big day with my teacher. Ever."

The inadequacy of gift cards, bottles of wine, coffee mugs and house plants is sometimes overwhelming. How do you say thank you to a really great teacher?

In a rather happy accident, my three older kids have all shared the same kindergarten teacher.  The teacher exudes "kindergarten-ness" - or at least she has become our family's ideal of a kindergarten teacher.  To teach children at the advent of their education how to love learning, how to be respectful, how to find their way socially in a new world, has to be a task of Herculean effort.

It seems like an impossible chore to show kids simultaneously how to use a scissors, not eat glue, find a bathroom, read a book and not melt down every day on the playground. And to do it over and over again through the years with the passing fads and in spite of many self-conscious parents (oh, boy I can only imagine the parents), must be the definition of vocation.

This woman has loved my kids, but also counseled my husband and I as we navigated the uncharted territory of school with our oldest. She paid attention to details, remembered important events so that when the other kids came through she could put context to every situation.

She doesn't mince words. We appreciate that she is strait forward and honest. It can be hard to tell the truth to parents of kindergartners.

It seems obvious, but still we offer thanks:

• for caring so much about the kids, 
• for making their doorway to education be welcoming and wide open,
• for encouraging them when they struggled, 
• for being firm when they wandered, 
• for being kind when all day kindergarten seemed very long, 
• for being patient when the snow (or the rain) wouldn't stop, 
• for keeping them safe in the shadow of so much scary news, 
• for helping my family make good decisions and valuing us as parents,
• for continuing to sing and smile from September to June,
• for encouraging us when we worried,
• for laughing with us at the humor of five year olds,
• for waking up every day and making the life of my child that much better. 

We are indebted to the good teachers in our lives  - and there is no real ability to pay it back, only forward. As part of her nature, my daughter is sunshine. She is spunky and sparkly. Yet not everything was easy for her this year - she's young and very small for her grade - and tomorrow she leaves kindergarten a shining reflection of her teacher's steady and radiant heart.

Really, how do you say thank you for that?