It’s strange. The teachers I end up feeling most grateful for are music teachers. I remember how, in my yearbook senior year, I wrote an effusive (more or less) thank you note to the band teacher in my senior page. I remember my mom being surprised at this. And I remember saying: “We had a class that was just playing music! It was right in the middle of the day! It was just playing music with other people! . . .” Anyway, it was pretty awesome, and I know a lot of students don’t get that opportunity.
And so, when it came time now to write an anonymous thank you letter to a teacher that I appreciated (as an act of kindness), I did think about it a little bit, but the person I definitely and undoubtedly and X word for surety wanted to write to was my piano teacher, Mrs. Emmerick.
I mean, I took lessons at her house. You know? And for many, many, many years. And she gave me a (really fairly large) bust of Beethoven for a high school graduation present.
Anyway, I’m not sure that my music teachers were my best teachers, or that music ended up being a huge influence on my life in some indirect way, or just that playing music somehow lights up or keys into gratitude (so that all music teachers have an advantage here—their teaching is being associated with music—the way you can get a dog to associate “Sit!” with a treat!) . . . BUT I do feel grateful to my music teachers.
And just in case: I also feel grateful to other people, and other teachers. I’m just writing a post about writing one anonymous letter! And dong some very casual and brief musings.
(Shameless plug: You should write an anonymous letter to a teacher you feel grateful towards! And, even if you don’t, it’s just a lot of fun: making a list, Top Five Teachers You Feel Grateful Towards. It might surprise you, and it might be interesting to see the patterns that emerge (music, for example) as you try it).
Difficult Things 