Dear Mrs. Feiran

Dear Feiran (School Mom),

You have had an incredible impact on my life. You were the first person to ever made me feel like an asset in the classroom. I never knew what it felt like to love learning until I met you. Being the oldest of four children, my parents always pressured me to take advanced classes, despite my pushing back. It wasn’t until I took your class my freshman year that I wanted to push myself. You have showed me what it means to be a learner and what it means to be a learner and what it means to stick up for myself and the things  that make my life worth living.

Thank you for making me feel that my writing, music, and theater careers were important. I grew up in a family that wanted me to go into a career in science or math, when that is obviously not my strong suit. Sometimes I would come home with a “B” on a math test and a huge smile on my face because I thought that I had failed only to be greeted with a stepfather who would smirk and tell me, “I will not have anyone in the family celebrating a ‘B’.” Then I would come to you, and you would give me a hug and a high five and ask me how everything else was going.

You made me feel like a person, not a grade. There were times when you played the role of a mother better than anyone else in my life was at the time. Thank you for staying with me after school to talk about my parents or how my friends decided to exile me in that last semester of my senior year. In times that I felt completely alone, you were always there. Thank you for taking me under your wing and telling me that I was talented. Those classes that I would help with and the papers I would grade lead me down the path that I am on now. You are the first person to take time out of her day to make me feel that I was special.

I especially want to thank you form myself as a woman. Your classes, commentary, and our little talks made me proud to be a woman in a world that seems completely against my kind. I am proud to be who I am because of you. And for that, I will never be able to thank you enough.

I am beyond excited to be your student teacher and to mentor young women in my classroom the way that you did for me.

Long story short, I just want to say thank you.

Love,

Haley