To Ms. Studnicki

Dear Ms. Studnicki,

Oh my goodness, it has been so long since I have seen you! After I left the suburbs of San Francisco for Los Angeles with my family, I was always a little saddened that I did not keep in touch with you and the rest of the Lincoln Elementary School gang. I may not have seen you in a long while, but the memories of being in your class have been close to my heart. I am in my last year of college now and I am studying to be a teacher, so I thought I’d write you a letter to tell you how much my time in your class impacted me, and to say thank you. 

In order to properly describe what that time meant to me, I need to tell you a bit about who I was in the second grade. My second grade teacher was known as a very funny teacher and I remember being excited to be in her class. Although I had a solid group of friends at that time, I enjoyed solitary time and liked creating stories or walking by myself. In these moments of solitary creativity I never really thought about what it would look like to other people. But I remember after one of these periods when we came back to class my second grade teacher told me she had seen me working on one of my stories. She mocked my playfulness in front of the entire class. I was mortified and felt like a complete freak. I was an inquisitive child who loved learning, but interactions like these made me nervous to go to school. 

I’ll admit Ms. Studnicki, learning that you would be my third grade teacher did not quell my nervousness. I noticed how you dyed your hair a different color every month. You were the only teacher in the school with tattoos. Your classroom off in the annex, separated from the rest of the school by the 3rd through 5th grade playground, seemed like a mystical land ruled by a colorful, recondite queen. You were such a powerful figure, and I felt so small. I was sure third grade would be a terrible year. 

On the first day of school, we leaned up against the chain link fence in front of your classroom and admired your purple punchbuggy. You opened the door, and after a quick greeting said “Every morning when you come in the door, you will shake my hand, look me in the eye, and we will say good morning to one another.” My anxiety started to rise. Why did she want us to do this? When I looked up at your kind gaze, I knew why you wanted us to shake your hand: you wanted to make sure that every day we felt seen. 

We sat in a circle on the rug in the middle of the classroom. You sat down with us. I remember you telling us right off the bat that we were to call you “Ms. Studnicki,” not “Mrs.” or “Miss.”  You explained that “Ms.” was a way of addressing a woman that did not depend on her marital status. Men did not change their title when they were married, so why do women have to? I was no longer scared of you. Instead I thought, “This is the coolest teacher ever.” 

Thank you for letting me sit in your room after school and chat with you. Talking with you was different than it was with any other adult; I felt that you genuinely appreciated my thoughts and opinions. You told me I was insightful. I remember during one of these talks I asked why you dyed your hair so often. You told me that a long time ago when you were sad, you shaved all your hair off, and immediately regretted it. When it finally grew back, you decided you would use your hairstyle to show your creativity, and started dying it all kinds of fun colors. At nine years old my mother was still dictating my haircuts, but nonetheless this story made me feel like I understood something about you. That story showed that you were a human being, and I felt lucky to get to hear it. 

 Thank you for letting us explore. Do you remember our class trip to the De Young, San Museum? I hated field trips when I was

young; they felt like day long recesses where childhood social politics reached new heights. I was glued to your hip during that trip, but you didn’t seem to mind. You asked me lots of questions, like what I liked about certain works or which painting in a room was my favorite. I did not understand much of the abstract art we saw that day, but I did understand that you wanted me to get the most possible out of that field trip. 

Thank you for your words in that parent-teacher conference. You sat down with my mother and me, and you told us how thoughtful you thought I was. You told us you loved how I often paused before sharing my ideas. I had never felt that my conscientiousness was something to value; I felt I was too quiet, I overthought things. You cast these qualities as strengths, which I had never thought of them as before. Even now, when I feel I am being too quiet or too reticent, I think back to your kind words in that meeting. 

When I entered college, I knew I wanted to focus on connecting with individuals and building a better world from the ground up. I decided to major in Education so I could become the kind of teacher who let’s kids know it is not just okay to be exactly who they are, but it is necessary to create a stronger community. You were the teacher who taught me this lesson; you made us feel accepted and noticed by being unapologetically yourself, and encouraging us to do the same. I want to share with you a few lines of a poem that has guided me through my undergraduate study of Education, and I feel perfectly summarize what it felt like to be your student:

Your  children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

……………………………………………………………..

You may house their bodies but not their souls, 

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you

Cannot visit, not even in your dreams (Gibran 4-5, 10-12)

With deepest gratitude,

McKenna

Works Cited

Gibran, Khalil. “On Children.” Poets.org, https://poets.org/poem/children-1. Accessed 22 April 2020.