🍎 Teaching Tuesday The Significance of a Letter

🍎 The night we returned after dropping off our youngest son at college, six years ago, I found a note on my nightstand from him. As I read the letter tears came to my eyes. A phrase from that letter is imprinted in my mind, “I appreciate all you had done to get me to this point and the opportunities you and Dad have given me, no doubt, will change the course of my life and the path I will take” (I can clearly remember those words, and it did.)  A letter is a very powerful thing. Over the weekend I received a letter from one of my favorite teachers and it too brought tears to my eyes. Her letter was in response to a blog post I had written about the significance of teachers in our lives. She and her husband were two of those teachers who made a huge impact in my life. What makes a letter significant is that someone puts in words what is in their heart and on their mind and it is there forever.  I remember reading many years ago when my children were very young, that Jackie Kennedy asked her children to write her letters on her birthday and for Christmas rather than getting her a purchased gift.  When my children got old enough to write, I asked the same of them. Those letters have been saved in folders over the years, and I also save all of the letters received over the years. I remember early on in my husbands dental career, he received a letter from one of his teachers who came in as a patient. His Dad told him to save that letter in a file at work and that there would be others, so on a difficult day, he should take that folder out and read the letters and remember the patients who appreciate his work. Over the years the file has grown as has the significance of those letters. Teach your children to write letters. You can pick up some inexpensive notecards or stationary  and maybe for a birthday get them some with their name on it. Place them a desk or cabinet with some colorful pens and have stamps readily available so it is very easy for them to write a note to someone.  Have a folder for them to save notes in cards THEY receive. Maybe you teach them to set aside a time during the week or on the weekend when they take time to write a note. Once you get into the routine of writing notes and letters it becomes, a habit, and who knows their note may just cause someone to say…”It’s a Great Day🍎