What My 2nd Grade Teacher Taught Me About Life
Teachers teach us many lessons; not all of them come from a book. Many come from their heart.
Inspired by Trista Ainsworth Thank You Notes to a Teacher.
Miss Jones was my 2nd-grade teacher. She was very nice to me, and I adored her. She forced me to realize that I was poor. A week before our regular Christmas Class party, our names were written on pieces of paper and placed in a box. Each student picks a name, and their parents would purchase a gift for that child. Joan McDonald picked my name.
I forget whose name I chose. Dressed in our Sunday best, it was a happy occasion for all because we wore a uniform to school on regular school days. Parents were asked to donate various food items. My mother wasn’t able to contribute anything; she had problems feeding her six children.
I was happy and excited to be going to my first Christmas party. My mother wrapped my gift, which was a small ball with brown paper instead of gift paper. It was the second Friday in December and the last day of school. I don’t remember what I was wearing, but I know it wasn’t my best, because I wore lots of hand-me-downs.
I was the fourth of six children. I had three sisters older than me. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, devotion was in front of the office for the entire school. The other days we worshipped in class. I attended a Catholic Primary School.
After devotion, we would exchange our gifts. Joan McDonald, the girl who picked my name, bought me a beautiful three-tier red and black drinking glass set. I think about ten glasses were in it.
When my teacher looked at my gift and compared it with the one I bought to exchange, she grabbed it away from me and tore it open. Scrutinizing it, she shamed me in front of the entire class. Then she threw my ball into the garbage bin. My gift Joan bought for me, she gave it to the child whose name I picked.
I was seven years old, and that’s when I realized that I was destitute. The true meaning of poverty was unclear to me at that time, but my pain was real. I attended school many mornings without eating breakfast. I had days with no lunch and many dinnerless nights too. As I grew, I was able to identify many areas and instances of poverty in my life and the lives of others around me.
I hated it. I hated how it divides us and makes us weaker. I loathe how the poor are treated without regard, care, or humanity by many in our world. I detest how cruelty and injustice seem to follow poverty. I also learn and see areas where many of us help to keep ourselves poor.
Being poor and having too many children is the most common contribution to poverty I see here in Jamaica.
Thursday, December 27, 2012, the front page of the Star, ‘woman seeks help for six kids. Her story is heart-wrenching.
April 6, 2016, the Weekend Star, ‘30-year-old mother of nine children house burn down.’
The Weekend Star July 8, 2016, ‘Brilliant Boy Aims to Help Others.’ It is about an 11-year-old who passed his Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) for a prominent high school. His mother is a single parent with 11 children; he is the tenth one. She needed the public’s help.
Watching ABC World News last week; and Matt Guttman, a Journalists, was interviewing a father of ten in Guatemala. The topic was about the rapid influx of refugees entering the USA through the Mexican border. He was explaining how he paid smugglers to get one of his sons across the border.
I study areas where my race, family, and friends help to contribute to their poverty. That study guided me along a better pathway to a better life. I was able to do something about my poverty.
The question I ask, “At what point should humans realize that they are poor?”
A lot of people living in poverty aren’t aware that they are poor. That’s my opinion because I know many whose actions, choices, and decisions are contributing to their poverty, and it’s a generational thing. Many aren’t doing anything to stop it.
My mother was one of them, and I have various family members who are still doing it.
https://plenty.org/25000-children-die-each-day-due-to-poverty/
I thought my teacher’s action was cruel and insensitive, and it has destroyed me emotionally. But she opened my eyes to my world of deficiency.
I saw a world where poverty stole dreams, opportunities, ideas, ambitions, lives, and happiness — a universe where poverty assists in spreading suffering, pain, and death. A planet where wealth buys anything and everything, and the lives of the poor have no value.
Thanks to her action, I can change the course of history for my children and their children.
Her decision has given me the wisdom to secure the right resources to provide my children with the tools they need to fulfill their dreams. Everything that poverty denied me. Poverty is pain, and thanks to Miss Jones, I can relieve that pain for my generation. She has saved my life and my children, hopefully, my future generation.
Teachers teach us many lessons; not all of them come from a book. Many come from their heart.
Knowing I was poor, was power for me.
Thank you, Miss. Jones.
Thank you for reading this piece. I hope you enjoyed it.
https://mediumauthor.com/@thisisanneliselords
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