Letters to Judy, What Your Kids Wish They Could Tell You, published in 1986, is a collection of letters from children to the popular author, Judy Blume, best known for “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”, “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” and “Blubber”.
Dear Judy,
I am in sixth grade. My teacher says I am a complete airhead. She gives me sickeningly low marks. I feel that I have the potential and desire to really be something, maybe an author or a journalist. But my teacher says I wouldn’t be dedicated to my work enough.
I try my best to show her she is wrong, but nothing works. She will never like me or think that my work is any good. I hate how she calls on me when I don’t raise my hand. But when I do, she acts like she doesn’t see me.
Christine, age 11.
Teachers are human and humans can be rotten. For an 11 year old girl to be put down by her own teacher is a real shame, especially since it is most likely a reflection of how this teacher was poorly treated was when she was a child like Christine.
Despite her teacher’s disparaging remarks, Christine sounds as if her self-esteem is still intact and if that is the case, my bet is that she has encouragement from her parents and knows better than to believe she’s hopeless, as her teacher would make her out to believe.
Sometimes all it takes is one person to make the difference between having a robust self-esteem and allowing one negative influence alter your view of yourself. If you grow up being at least one person’s highest priority, it seems you stand a better chance at life.
“If you can’t do it, who can?”
I was old enough to understand that was a mother’s way of encouragement, yet even as a naive kid I knew that if there’s something I couldn’t do well, there are literally thousands of kids at my school alone who could do it infinitely better than me! In fact, based on all the fancy private schools that fed into my university, I pretty much assumed this to be the case.
You only need a handful of people—sometimes just one—to believe in you. That person could be a parent, a sibling, a friend or a teacher. In Christine’s case, she’s clearly not going to get this support from her deadbeat teacher whose harsh attitude toward her might actually be some jealousy in disguise.
