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The Heart of Teaching
Last week was National Teacher Appreciation Week, and I’ve been thinking about the many ways teachers impact the lives they touch. We celebrate them for what they teach—reading, writing, arithmetic—but their influence goes so much deeper. When we send our children to school, we are handing over a precious treasure to their care.
Teachers become a parent’s eyes and ears away from home. They are often the ones who notice when something isn’t quite right, when a child is struggling with belonging, making friends, or falling behind. They create a space where a child can learn listening and friendship skills along with their ABCs. Good teachers know how to step in when words begin to wound.
Whenever I see a story about a teacher making a difference, I save it. Today, I want to celebrate three teachers and their stories—not just because they are great teachers, but because their lessons expand beyond the classroom. They remind me to watch my words, practice kindness, and keep my heart open. They inspire me, just as they inspired the children who were fortunate to be in their classrooms.
Karen Wunderlich Loewe, a teacher at an Oklahoma middle school, created a process for students to let go of the “baggage” they were carrying. She asked students to write down their burdens on a piece of paper without including their names—things weighing heavy on their hearts. After wadding the papers into balls and throwing them across the room to symbolize releasing the weight, they then took turns reading out loud what another student wrote.
Karen says she cried along with the students as these kids opened up and shared with the class. Things like suicide, parents in prison, drugs in their family, being left by their parents, death, cancer, losing pets. The kids who read the papers would cry because what they were reading was tough. The person who shared (if they chose to tell us it was them) would often cry as well. Karen believes her kids will judge a little less, love a little more, and forgive a little faster. This bag of crumpled “baggage” remained at the door as a reminder to her kids that we all have baggage, we are not alone, we are loved, and we have each other’s back.
Matt Eicheldinger recently retired from teaching middle school in Minnesota. His book Sticky Notes is a collection of 100 true, uplifting short stories from his 15 years in the classroom. One story is about a middle-school boy who wore a small pouch around his neck. Sometimes, during conversations, he would reach up and rub it gently with his fingers, almost like a talisman. Curious, Matt asked him about it. The student said it contained prayers his family wrote for him—prayers for peace, love, and kindness—all folded up and bound together. He told Matt that when he talks to people, he rubs the pouch and sends the family’s prayers onto them because not everyone has those things.
That young boy carried words of peace, love, and kindness and offered them silently to the world around him. But not all words are offered in kindness. Some arrive loud and sharp, leaving wounds we cannot see. I remember as a child being taught to respond to mean words with, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” But it’s not true. Bruises and broken bones heal, often completely, but hurtful words may last a lifetime.
Sivan Karo decided to teach her elementary class about the power of words by taking a clean sheet of paper with a heart drawn upon it. She prefaced the lesson by saying she had heard some unkind things being said at recess and that she wanted to talk about how important our words are. She asked students to pretend the sheet of paper was someone’s heart and instructed them to shout out unkind words. As they did, she began slowly crumpling the piece of paper until it was just a smushed up ball.
When they were quiet again, she said, “I heard a lot of mean things” and gave some examples. As she held up the ball of wadded paper, she asked the children what happened to this person’s heart. “It got crumpled,” said one child. She agreed and noted that she could see they felt bad. She then asked them, “How do we fix it?” They decided saying nice words would help and as they did, Sivan began unfolding the paper little by little. She tried pressing it out on her leg, working very hard to get it back to the smooth sheet that it started out as.
When she asked what they noticed, they said “It’s still wrinkled.” Even though she had done her best to straighten it out, the children agreed it could never go back to the way it was before. She explained, “The second words leave our mouth, that’s it. They’re out there and we can’t actually take them back. And that always stays with the person. They will probably forgive but probably won’t forget. We want to make sure that we are really mindful with our words. To think and ask ourselves, ‘Will this crumple someone’s heart?’”
There are moments in childhood that stay with us. I think this was one of those. They may forget a spelling word or a math formula, but they will remember how it feels to be on the receiving end of words that wound—and, if guided well, they’ll begin to understand the responsibility they carry in how they speak to others.
In a subsequent lesson about standing up for someone who is the target of unkindness, Sivan read to her class the book One by Kathryn Otoshi. This simple story demonstrates how not saying anything allows harm to grow unchecked, and how much courage it takes for just one person to stand up for someone being bullied—whether it’s physical harm, verbal attacks, social shunning, or cyberbullying.
We know that bullying doesn’t end when we leave the playground. It doesn’t disappear with age or accomplishment. It finds its way into families, into communities, into the spaces where power can seem absolute. And sometimes hurtful, hateful language is passed along—hurt echoing hurt—until someone, somewhere, chooses to do something different—chooses to stand up and speak up.
And that is where the work of teachers like Karen, Matt, and Sivan becomes so profoundly important. They interrupt the pattern. They teach children that words matter—not just the ones spoken out loud, but the ones we carry inside. Because over time, those outer voices can become inner ones.
If left unexamined, those harsh words can take root and begin to shape how we speak to ourselves. We become the voice calling ourselves, “stupid” or “dumb” or telling ourselves “Something must be wrong with you.” We can become our own bullies.
But that voice is not the only one available to us. The words we hear may shape us, but the words we choose to repeat can also heal us. We can learn, over time, to notice that inner dialogue and shift it. We can learn to speak to ourselves with the same patience and encouragement a good teacher offers to a struggling student.
I’m so grateful for teachers who help children discover that words can wound—and that they can also heal. I’m grateful for those who teach that courage and kindness matter. Those who show how one voice willing to stand up for another person can change the tone of an entire room.
And sometimes, long after the spelling tests and math lessons are forgotten, those are the lessons that remain. A teacher planted the seeds of awareness, but we must become the gardeners.