RafaelFajardo

A coworker of mine recently had to say goodbye to her students. She is moving forward from her time at the school, where she’s been long enough to see Kindergarteners graduate to middle school. On the last day, one of her kids–a notoriously disruptive second grader–approached her. The boy gave her a watch, and said that this way, she would always know what time it was. She always asked her co-facilitator what time it was, rather than taking out her cell phone to check. He asked her to think of him every time she looked at the watch. He told her that because of her, he knew that he could get better at school. The moment, as she described it to me, transcended the hierarchy of adult-child, teacher-student. They were just two colleagues who had learned and grown because of each other.