And the lights are not fluorescent, and there are no words on the page.

Second Literary Communities Essay

To: [REDACTED]

From:[REDACTED]

Dear graduating class of 2027,

I hope this letter finds you in good health and good spirits! I know that's a bit of a rare combination these days, but I know that if any one of you isn't feeling the best when you hear this, my mother will only be reading it because she thinks you guys'll get a kick out of it.

That happens a lot actually. My mom bringing up me or my dad's existence and her students at the time freaking out over it (in a good way, usually). I think it's because being your age makes you see teachers through this sort of rose-colored lens (or an ugly shade, if you don't like them or school). You spend your whole itty-bittie life around your parents or whoever takes care of you, with little glimpses of other adults buzzing around you every once and a while, above you and never sparing a full conversation. At the very least, not one that spans past "So, do you know when you're gonna start school?", before they nod along to your answer, smiling without any teeth and occasionally glancing back at one of your parents, waiting for you to finish so they can start chatting with them.

And then, all of a sudden, you've got a whole adult they ship you off to for 7 whole hours, one who asks you questions and compels you to speak with the point of a finger, who listens to you all the way until they finish walking you to lunch just to come get you back at the end of recess, who crouches down to almost reach your eyes, looking you dead straight in the eyes as they ask why your whiteboard is empty while you stare up at their forehead.

I'd be pretty weirded out if they mentioned a family of their own. It's a bit of a TV cliche at this point, but I think I get why some younger kids assume their teacher's live at school (even though I'm sure you guys already found out by now, from finding a teacher account on your For You page or something or other) Maybe I was just a bit too attached to mine in grade school, but it almost feels like my teachers were my adults. Not in a selfish way, per say, just that it doesn't make much inherent sense for anyone else to be known in the way they knew me.

And it's funny, 'cause my mom's been a teacher all my life, and she brings up what her students did that day every family time, it's her first conversation starter every night, only she calls her class her kids or her children, or sometimes even her babies if you guys did something particularly cute, and the day I got old enough to find interest in adult conversation, I asked how work was that day, and the day she first said fine, I asked if the kids did anything interesting that day because somehow, by that point, they felt like my kids.

Or family. More like family, like her and my dad and my grandparents whenever they came over to come get me on Fridays, but mostly the way my highschool friend group was "the kids", and mom, and baba, and sibling, and auntie, and my little baby brother, even when only one of them got nicknamed mom.

...

My mom used to enlist my help in grading, sometimes. I found it lame, when I didn't get to use the elusive red pen, or when it reminded me of grading the weekly times test of the person in front of me, knowing I would get mine back in red and white and black, but mostly red, or even when it was math booklets or vocab quizzes or something else I could accidentally breeze over and mark a point off when I wasn't supposed to.

And I'd say I did it to help out my mom around the house, and I did, but I did—always—do it for a chance to read what they had written.

And by written, I mean the journal assignments where you had to write about what you did over the break in terrible spelling and sentences with the words smushed together at the end of every line, or card you wrote and I wrote and everyone wrote on a few specific holidays, the grammar sentences that you tried to shove an entire story into, not even because you wanted to even, but because your brain, in the earliest stages of development, told you you should.

It reminds me of myself. In the way I can tell which genes I got from which parent and which friend is like me enough to stamp them as family in my mind. It reminds me of the first time I sat down in front of a blank Word document and banged out the first few pages of a voluntary story.

I read the pieces you guys wrote about animals in their habitat. I hope your next teachers' kids get to read your next works. Until highschool, at the very least.

Sincerest wishes,

[REDACTED]