I used to sob on the last day of school every year.

Sob.

I hated to see my kids go.

By the time summer rolled around we had spent 9 months together, I couldn’t imagine not seeing them every day of the week.

I knew who loved french toast stick day in the cafeteria. And who would never bring anything but cold lunch.

I knew who was worried about their friendships. And who was dying to be put a table with their best friend.
I knew who was anxiously awaiting the next Harry Potter book in the library. And who had yet to find a book they really liked to read.

And who knew all the words to I’m a Barbie girl. And who hated talking in class.

I knew things about their families that made them feel like my own.

And things about their sweet little hearts that made me want to take them all home with me.

We had cultivated a classroom full of inside jokes and shared memories and a way of doing things that would never, ever exist again because it could only come to be with this exact combination of amazing humans.

I’d spent night after night telling my own family stories about my kids, thinking of ways to help one or another with tricky spelling or math and reading their writing around the dinner table, and picking out just the right book for them to enjoy next.

Then one day, they were gone. Onto the next event. Leaving just a little hole in my heart and a connection that for me would last forever. I will ALWAYS want to know how “my kids” are doing. I love watching them out in the world, accomplishing dreams, and now even raising their own children because apparently, I might not be young.

Teachers are a whole thing, my friends. So when I see people getting all this and that about them on the internet I will ALWAYS rise to their defense.
Because I know their hearts.
Teaching is unlike any other profession in the land because teachers risk loving their students day in and day out even though they know they don’t have a bit of claim to them. They don’t get to see how it all turns out most often. They give from their own hearts to help grow those of their students and then they send them off, hoping they have planted little seeds of knowledge and connection and love into those hearts.

Then they pause and get ready to do it again.

They give and give and give, day after day, in a way most of us only give to our family and friends. But they are giving to whatever student walks through the door and they do it for the good of not only those students but for every single one of us. The experience of those students ripples out into the very communities we live in and into the world.

The responsibility is no joke.

The heart of a teacher will always be with their students, and most often when you hear them talking about their kids, the meaning behind that little phrase is bigger than you could ever imagine.

We will always love our kids. Full stop.

Somewhere right now there is a teacher who remembers the name of the dog you had in kindergarten or who wonders what your life is like in college or who cried real tears on the day you walked out the door in grade 4.
There is a teacher who hated to see you go. Yes, even if you were that kid. Maybe especially if you were.

And so we collectively need to cherish our teachers. Because this job is harder than it ever has been. And they might need us to give back just a little bit, if only in sending a quick thank you or maybe choosing to support them in their profession rather than constantly finding fault.
It is quite literally the least we can do.

Thank a teacher. Because they are thankful for you.

Amy{Pictured is my teaching partner in crime and fellow inside joke maker Erin Loritz, we look like legit babies also I was very pregnant and that was just what my nose did when I had girls growing in me.}

Originally published on Hiding in the Closet with Coffee on Facebook.