Appreciate This

 My principal, who spent many years in a classroom before ascending to the administration level, was not going to let Teacher Appreciation Week slip by unnoticed. After returning from our strike, she made a point of having our last staff  meeting of the year be a celebration of us all. There was food. There was a cake. There was laughter. There was appreciation.

And of course there was shop talk.

It began with reflections on the past year: What was right. What went wrong. What tested us. What we overcame. And then we settled in to telling war stories, as teachers will, about students that tested us and our resolve. As we passed out of the current crop and wandered into the past, memories came flooding back. 

And then came was my principal's story about a kindergartener she taught some sixteen years ago. Marie was not any sort of unusual problem. Just a kid who took "extra molding," to use her term. Eventually, Marie was able to show up to school on time. With her backpack. With her homework. With a sense of what school was about. Extra molding. 

Marie was shot and killed last month. A man who decided that he was going to put a stop to the loud traffic on the street outside his house on MacArthur Boulevard went out into the street at one in the morning and started firing his AR-15 at passing cars. One of the bullets struck Marie in the head. First responders were unable to revive her and she died at the scene. Oakland police said they seized two AR-15 rifles, two handguns, high-capacity rifle magazines, one hundred ninety-four loose rounds and body armor. The late-night assailant is also the father of two young children. 

Those children will most likely grow up in a world without their father present. Marie, who was on the cusp of being a grown up will not grow up any more. All that extra molding gone to waste. So we look forward to another chance with another kindergartener. A kid who needs help. 

Appreciate that.