Yesterday, Charlotte returned to grade one.

She began her teaching placement 1.5 hours from home by public transit, in a class with many ESL students, a breakfast program and an amazing teacher.

Last year she was with grade fours at her own former school. A ten minute walk from home, in a world of make believe.

Interestingly or perhaps not, she loves this new place.

I think about how she cried in grade one. How nervous she looks in this picture. But always trying to present happy. How she used to get nosebleeds and was sent to the office and therefore thought she was being punished. I remember how she loved her new friends and her purple lunch box and her teacher who was also a ballerina- only a real one. She would sing to them and play a mint green piano. I remember how she worried about natural disasters like fires and hurricanes and tornadoes.  She hated loud noises and conflict. I remember how she could read nothing and then one day read the label from a Hellman’s mayonnaise jar The difference real eggs make. And then read everything with a massive appetite requiring nervous librarians everywhere to limit her to 60 books at a time.

Not long after I had to hold her tight and tell her as little as possible about 9/11. Reading, inquisitiveness and listening became a tremendous threat to innocence.

Today I think of all that she is and has been that she brings to the job. The sharing of her makes me really excited. There is an influence of her whole family, all our friends, her life’s ups and downs, her good teachers and even the not so good teachers whose example remind her of how not to be.

She is off to a great start with compassion leading her.

One day I would like to see teachers, the exceptional ones, rewarded like hedge fund managers.

Think about it.