Below is an anecdote I wrote as an example for a writing assignment for my middle school students.  I thought it would be prudent to share with fellow teachers.  We need to practice empathy for the  parents of our students, as well as for our students.  Teachers are guides to help and serve, not to judge.

“As a teacher, I often spend more time with people’s children than they do.  I get to know them as family, and think of my students as my own children.  As adults, we often have multiple jobs, multiple hats to wear:  parent, spouse, sibling, child, co-worker, and so forth.  When you work and have children, it is difficult to juggle those hats.  As a Montessori teacher, we are trained to observe closely the students in our care and supply not only academic care, but also social and emotional nurturing.  I get upset when I see children neglected in small ways.  However, as I grow as a mother and a teacher, I increasingly put myself in others’ shoes.

Very early in my career, I taught a young boy who would come to school in dirty clothes, wrinkled like an old newspaper and covered in bright green grass stains and flecks of playground mulch.  His hair looked like messy strands of bleached straw upon his head.  On cold winter days with crisp biting winds, he would come in simple shorts and a thread-bare t-shirt, without even a coat.  I felt so badly as he shivered like a lamb, and I offered him my own coat, which swamped his small body like a blanket.  As I look back on the situation, I should have handled it better than I did.

As a young teacher, I didn’t feel comfortable offering advice to a parent.  But now, I am older and more comfortable talking to and offering advice to parents.  I have more experience under my belt as a parent and a teacher.  I know how I would want to be helped as a busy, working mom.  Perhaps I should have given a gentle reminder about the cold weather at carpool, along with having a back-up supply of old coats and pants from my boys to clothe this young boy.  Those simple hints to the mom without judging, and helping the young student without singling him out, would have been better than just talking about it, remembering only the negative experience.  I should use this story as a reminder of how to treat others, as I would wish to be treated.”