show some love

I know it’s the end of the week already, but can I just ask everyone out there to show teachers some love?  Write a note, shake a hand, give your kid’s teacher a pat on the back because as a group, teachers are one of the most under-appreciated professionals out there.  I gave my talk at UFT headquarters last night, and it was fabulous—each teacher went home with a copy of Wish and a copy of Bird, and during my talk I could see heads nodding and some folks were even taking notes!  I had a lot of fun, and am so glad my anxiety around public speaking has mostly subsided.  Now, if my Powerpoint presentation had failed for some unknown technical reason, I would have been up a creek…but everything went as planned, I felt relaxed, and the audience welcomed me with a unique introduction: my bio was cut into seven lines, and members of the audience stood up and read one line each (ending with “She currently lives in Brooklyn” and lots of cheers from other Brooklynites).  On Wednesday, I delivered sixty books to a literacy coach and I *knew* some of the money she gave me came from her own pocket.  The school doesn’t have money for books, so the students have to buy their own…and when some students fall short, the teacher picks up the slack.  I can’t understand why our schools are so poorly funded.  Why some schools have a dozen smart boards, and others don’t have a single computer.  I’m going back to do some free workshops for that teacher, but ultimately, that doesn’t change the situation.  What will?  Not spending half our national budget on the military would help…anyway, for another great tribute to teachers, swing by Neesha’s blog to read about the amazing educators who helped shape her life.  My favorite English teacher emailed me this morning to inform me that she recalled finding an error while reading Wish (sigh); will now have to comb the manuscript for the place I used “laying” instead of “lying.”  Good looking out, Nancy!  After the talk was over, I went upstairs to get my belongings and met a UFT employee who claimed to be my neighbor; when I asked where he lived, he said, “Across from the botanic garden on Eastern Parkway,” but as we continued to talk, we discovered that we BOTH lived in the same building on Crown Street—he grew up there in the ’40s, and I lived there briefly in 2001!  Unbelievable…another educator felt she’d seen me before, and later came up and said, “Did you ever live on Washington Avenue?”  And I had!  It’s a small world, but teachers work so hard to shape the future…please do all you can to make them feel appreciated and supported!