An open letter to my K-4 school teachers+ my mom.

Hey ladies,

I have now been a teacher for 5 months, and let me tell you… I have taken for granted the true sanctity of teachers.

This job is such a strange mix of frustration, pride, success, failure, disappointment, overexertion, and happiness. You are a doctor, educator, therapist, and parent all wrapped into one person.

What an exhausting job.

Foundational skills, those primarily learned in grades K–4, are far more essential than I ever realized. Now that I teach, I can clearly see that many students’ struggles come from weak foundational skills.

Some students never fully learned letter sounds or blends. So if I give them a word like “catastrophe,” they cannot sound it out independently because the building blocks underneath that skill were not fully cemented.

I used to HATE fast math. I hated getting those sheets full of addition and subtraction problems, being told I had 5 minutes, and needing to solve as many out of 100 questions as possible. It felt like a humiliation ritual to me because I struggled with math as a child due to poor study skills and low confidence.

But now, as I create lessons based on curriculum progression, I can finally see the intention behind skill building. I see how every repetitive exercise was supposed to strengthen speed, confidence, and familiarity over time.

Unfortunately, many students lack a strong foundation.

I wasn't the biggest fan of school until about the 4th grade, myself. In 2nd grade, I was fully convinced I would have to join the military because I thought I just wasn’t “book smart”.

Which is funny now, as I giggle with my master's degree.

But somewhere between then and now, the teachers who kept dragging me along, my mom buying summer workbooks for every grade level, and the tutors she paid for did me an incredible service.

All of you made life easier for my middle- and high-school instructors and me later on.

And because I know where I came from, how confused I once was, how difficult learning sometimes felt, and how my brain works now, I truly believe none of these children are lost. There is always time to improve foundational skills.

So this is my virtual handshake to all teachers.

I hope that if you are still teaching, you still find joy in it.