~ My Red Folder ~

Each of my kids have a red folder in their desks. This is a catch-all for unfinished work, projects, and anything else that needs to be kept for more than a couple of days. They hate using thier red folders; I'm constantly nagging at them to put it in your red folder, not just in your desk.


But what they don't know is that I have my own red folder. I keep it in the bottom drawer of my desk, forgotten for months on end. It's a small folder, and I don't really have a name for it, but it's my catch-all for the little notes of appreciation students and parents have written me over the years. I remembered it again cleaning up Christmas gifts from students. I found a couple of nice handwritten cards and remembered I had a place for them. Opening the folder up is a little like time travel; many of the kids whose names are signed on these notes are in high school now, some have even graduated. But these notes take me back, to the time they spent with me. I get a little teary-eyed, remembering.

~ There's a letter from S, who was only here a few months before she moved. She liked my class so much that she, in her words, "could sit 12 hours of every day learning something new with you."

~ Another layer down, there's a handmade birthday card from the whole class. They made it to cheer me up while I was at the doctor's getting tested for mono because I was feeling so terrible and they were doing busy work with one of the parapros.

~ Another card, this one a handmade Christmas card from kids who are sophomores now. They made it during class, passing it around under my nose to get it everyone's signature on the card.

~ A letter from a parent, the first half all business to notify the school of a different bus route for her daughter. The second half is why I kept it, though, it's a thank you for helping give her child confidence in herself.

~ A Thank You card from a graduating senior from my very first class, thanking me for the part I played in helping her graduate and remembering some of the Chinese words I taught them that year.

I don't share this to toot my own horn. The truth is that for every scrap of paper in this folder, there have been multiple angry phone calls from parents, kids I didn't reach, or who couldn't wait to get as far from my classroom as possible. Even though my red folder holds only a handful of paper, as I glance through it, the notes remind me again why I work in this field, why I decided to become a teacher in the first place.

So think about the teachers in your life: your own teachers, your child's teacher, or just a teacher you know. Let them know if you appreciate the job they're doing - maybe your little scrap of paper, your five minutes of time, will end up in their own "red folder," a reminder of why they go to work every day.