As You Go On

This is a letter I will give to one of my students today. He is so young that he cannot possibly know what the future holds for him.

Dearest One (real name withheld for obvious reasons),

Today as you leave our school and go on to whatever life may have in store for you, I want you to know how much you will be missed. I have been very grateful to have known you, and I want you to know how really wonderful you are. During the many years I have taught, I have known literally thousands of young people. Among those thousands of students, there were a few like you who I remember quite well. I want to tell you about them. When I first began teaching,I had a young student named Juan. He was so kind and generous with his friends. He loved to write and he was good at it. One terrible day, before the end of the school year, Juan found himself in a place where he needed to to leave but he chose to stay. He protected one of his friends from a local gangster. In so doing he was killed. I won't tell you how he died, but it was awful. I cannot forget him to this day. Then there was Tiarra. Everyone loves Tiarra and she is a very popular person. She worked so hard to get passing grades and this was difficult for her. After she graduated from our school, she returned to her own country. As fate would have it, this was the very place where a horrific tidal wave tore through the city and swept many people into the ocean never to return. I never learned if Tiarra was one of those people, but I tell myself she was not. John is another one of my students who went on to study at Berkeley. This is one of the best schools in California. I 'd like to think that I might have gone to that school myself if I had made better choices in high school. John came back to tell me one day that I made a difference in his life and to thank me for being one of his teachers. Let me tell you that this was one of the happiest days of my life. Then there was Hope whose father hurt her so badly that she almost didn't survive, but she did survive and somehow found the strength to go on and succeed. There was Scott whose father actually changed to became a woman. That was very very difficult for Scott to understand let alone accept. In his own way, Scott did accept this and went on with his own life. Another student, Gregorio, was a kid who all by himself found his way through Mexico from Guatemala to North America to get an education. He was a really small guy, but he found a garage to live in at some body's home and got his education. This he did in spite of always wondering if immigration was going to send him back to Guatemala. Those were the days when a young man growing up in Guatemala had no real prospects for the future, and he had seen horrible things done to the people he loved.
I want you to know that I could tell how amazing these people were. I don't know where they are today, but they were very strong. They were somehow a little different than the others and I knew it even then. You are one of these truly wonderful humans. Whatever life may hand you in the years to come, I want you to know that I believe in you. I haven't always had the easiest of lives myself and today isn't really any different. I do know that I never gave up no matter what, and in this refusing to give up, I have had the great honor to know people like you. Please always remember just how special you are. The world is a much better place because you are in it. The only reason in the world I am a teacher is because of people like you. You are one of the those kids that give people like me a reason to be here at all. I will miss you and I wish the best for you.