The best teacher

At the beginning of the school year, the class leader of the 6th grade stood in front of her former fifth grade students. She looked at her children and said that she loved them all equally and was happy to see them. It was a big lie, because behind one of the front sides, crumbling in pieces, there was a boy who the teacher did not like.
She met him, as well as all of her students, in the last school year. She noticed that he didn’t play with classmates, was wearing dirty clothes and smelled like he’d never washed. Over time, the teacher's attitude toward this student became worse and came to the point that she wanted to scratch all his written works with a red pen and put a unit.

Once, the student asked to analyze the characteristics of all students since the beginning of their education in school, and the teacher put the case of an unloved student to the very end. When she finally reached him and unwillingly began to study his characteristics, she was stunned.

The teacher who was leading the boy in the first class wrote, “This is a brilliant child, with a radiant smile. Do homework carefully and carefully. It’s a pleasure to be next to him.”

A second-grade teacher wrote about him: “He is an excellent pupil, appreciated by his comrades, but he has problems in the family: his mother is ill with an incurable illness, and his life at home must be a struggle with death.”

A third-class teacher said: "The death of his mother hit him very hard. He does his best, but his father is not interested in him and his life at home may soon affect his education if nothing is done."

The fourth grade teacher wrote: "The boy is optional, does not show interest in studying, has almost no friends and often falls asleep right in the classroom."

After reading the characteristics, the teacher became very ashamed of herself. She felt even worse when, on New Year’s Eve, all the students brought her gifts wrapped in a glossy gift paper with bands. The gift of her unloved student was wrapped in a rough brown paper. Some children started laughing when the teacher took out a bracelet, which lacked a few stones, and a bottle of perfume, filled a quarter.

But the teacher suppressed laughter in the classroom, shouting, “Oh, what a beautiful bracelet! - and, opening the bottle, sprinkled a little spirit on her wrist. On that day, the boy stopped after the lessons, approached the teacher and said, "Today you will smell like my mother smelled.

When he left, she was crying a long time. From that day on, she refused to teach only literature and mathematics, and began to teach children goodness, principles, and sympathy. After some time of such training, the unloved student began to return to life. At the end of the school year, he became one of the best students.

Despite the fact that the teacher repeated that she loved all the students equally, she really appreciated and loved only him.

A year later, when she was already working with others, she found a note under the door of the classroom where the boy wrote that she was the best teacher he had ever had.

It took another five years before she received another letter from her former student; he told her that she had graduated from college and was estimated to be third in the class, and that she continued to be the best teacher in his life.

Four years passed and the teacher received another letter where her student wrote that, despite all the difficulties, she would soon be graduating from the university with the best grades, and confirmed that she is still the best teacher he has ever had in his life.

Four years later, another letter arrived. This time he wrote that after graduating from university he decided to improve his level of knowledge. Now before his name and surname was the word doctor. And in that letter he wrote that she was the best of all the teachers he had in his life.

The time went. In one of his letters, he told me that he had met a girl and married her, that his father died two years ago and asked if she would refuse to take the place where the bridegroom’s mother usually sits at his wedding. Of course, the teacher agreed.

On the day of her student's wedding, she wore the same bracelet with the missing stones and bought the same perfumes that reminded the once unhappy boy of his mother. They met, hugged, and he smelled the native.

Thank you for your faith in me, thank you for giving me a sense of need and importance and for teaching me to believe in my own strength, for teaching me to distinguish between good and bad.

The teacher with tears in her eyes replied:

You are wrong, you have taught me everything. I didn’t know how to teach until I met you.