Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Dear Mary Ann,
Oh. Memories. A warm afternoon day in August 2001, I remember walking into Key School, to inquire about a teaching position. After observing you teach World History, I was entranced by the way you brought in Geography, Cultural Studies, Literature and just about everything else with your lesson. I remember you asking students to open up their Atlas to a certain page, and then pointing to a city (I think it was Berlin?). I was amazed at the respect they had and the discipline with which each student observed. Then… one student, raised his hand, and asked politely, when called upon, “Where is [Berlin] at?” I saw you grab a green slip (which I knew was some disciplinary action at that time), and then you asked the teenager to, “Please tell, Mr. Mims why you are getting lunch detention” [and why he was getting a Green Slip]. He turned to me and spoke in his squeaky, adolescent voice, “It’s because I answered my question in a preposition!” I knew right then, that this was a leader I could fall behind as a new teacher.
“How did she build in such routines, expectations, discipline, and quality in her instruction??,” I asked myself. I would soon learn in the next 7 years with you as my mentor and me as your shadow, spending summers by your side in Summer Schools, travel during breaks, and writing new curriculum for the themed years to come. I remember you sitting me down in the cafeteria after the first day observing you, and you asking me, “How do I see history? Do you see it through people, or events?” At the time, I said, I see it through events, and how those events changed the world. You said, OK. I can work with you, as I see it as people, who change history. And from then on, I thought we were having a melding of the minds, people and events, but as a young 21-year-old I had no idea, how my thought-process and teaching would change 20 years later as a now, 41-year-old teacher in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina. I now see history though the people that shaped events, and now, how you have shaped and changed my life. There is not a day I walk into my classroom and not think about you. I use Greek and Latin Roots every day, I have my active listenings if showing clips of films, I teach kids to look at the people in history and evaluate their character at the same time, learning from past failures and success.
Please know that you not only made a difference in countless of lives through Key School, but you also made a profound difference in me as my mentor, and as a result, have passed on a piece of your legacy through me to the hundreds of children I have now taught all over this world the past 20 years.
I love you, and you will always be with me,
Kyle
