(Sophie and her bells & Mouse)
The third and final gift we got from The Jefferson School (TJS) is the music teacher from the charter school we did not get admitted to.
I am not gonna mention the teacher by name; I don’t want to get anyone into trouble, but I cannot ignore what a great gift this teacher has been to our lives.
During the school year the teacher started teaching Sophie the xylophone, also known as mallets or bells. When we went on quarantine, the teacher skipped right over into Zoom like a life-long Zoom user. It was seamless.
We still thought (remember the lied to part from post # 1 on this topic) that Sophie was getting into the charter school, so we asked the teacher, now on Zoom, to also give Sophie piano lessons, as our local piano teacher quit about a year ago. The answer was yes.
When I tearfully told the teacher that Sophie had not gotten into the charter school, the teacher was also tearful, and agreed to keep teaching her… forever.
She has two lessons a week with this sweet and talented teacher and she has flourished. Her playing is wonderful. We cannot thank this teacher enough!
And so,
when everyone is screaming that they want their kids back in school no matter what,
and when people make arbitrary decisions about who gets into which school and who doesn’t,
it is a failure to treat the students or their teachers as human beings, with feelings and attachments and needs of their own.
I hope that, if the charter school goes back to business live and in person, Sophie’s teacher will be safe. I hope this teacher means as much to that school as our teacher certainly does to us.
