So this week I was teaching the class how to write a proper formal letter and of course the comparison came up between letters and emails. They asked what the point was when we are frankly moving towards a situation where technology is taking over from the written word.
I told them about a TED talk that I'd seen about a young woman battling depression in New York. She started writing letters and leaving them for strangers to pick up and as the concept grew people fell in love with her idea. She let it be known that if anyone wanted a letter, she would write it. She's started her own company writing letters, encouraging people to seize opportunities, take the first step towards dreams, to step away from abuse and misery and make a positive life. And people started writing back telling her of how her letters had changed their lives. Little anonymous letters of love were sent out into the world and made such a positive difference.
The next day Lara, a very dyslexic pupil, came in with three envelopes with "to a lovely person" written on the front. I mention her dyslexia only because I know that for her to do this would have taken hours. It would have taken so much effort to get it all right and because I know she is a perfectionist I know she looked up almost every word in her personal dictionary to make sure it was spelt properly. She asked if she could go and hide them around the school.
Later I was chatting to another teacher in the library and she spotted a little envelope sticking out from between the books. I told her to open it and we read what Lara had written inside:
To a lovely person,
You are great. There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Be brave.
Love from ?
It brought tears to the teacher's eyes, a woman who has been battling to come to terms with the death of her sister. A while later she came into my class to thank the anonymous person who made her smile and feel better about herself.
The next day there were more letters, from Lara and from a couple of other girls. They were hidden round the school and we watched and waited. Half way through our maths lesson, struggling with Improper Fractions, in comes one of my dearest friends - a teacher in the SEN department who is so loved by the girls. She was nearly crying.
"I have to share this with you," she said. "I found something and I don't know who it's from but I've been feeling so down and low and this letter.... I have to share it!"
She didn't have any idea it was from my class as she not been present the day before when we were discussing it in the staff room. It had touched her so much that she had to tell me about it.
Dear person,
You are beautiful! You are kind and strong. Don't let people tell you what to do. Follow you heart and your dreams and believe in yourself.
From
Your friend
Later in the playground a Year 2 pupil brought an envelope to me.
"I found this."
"well," I said, "it says it's for a lovely person. It must be for you, Cailtin."
She smiled. "If I open it can you read it to me?"
I read it to her and watched her face. Her smile was enormous. She asked if she could keep it, carefully folded it and put it in her pocket. I watched her walk away, her hand on her pocket and later I saw her sitting under the slide reading it to herself again.
The letters have touched staff and pupils alike. My class talk about writing more, giving more love to people we may never meet on trains and in the public swimming pool, the grocery shops, petrol stations....
My class may be chatty and scatty. They may never be brain surgeons or CEOs. In fact I worry about their academic tests into the nearby high schools next year. But man, those girls are the most creative, most giving children I've had the pleasure to teach. And I am so grateful that they remind me how beautiful the world is.
