I teach 3rd grade. One of my students always drew pictures of me\u2014big teeth, wild hair, wrinkles. Other teachers joked, \u201cShe\u2019s mocking you!\u201d I laughed it off, but something told me to keep every single one.<\/p>\n
They weren\u2019t flattering. Honestly, some were hard to look at. But I never threw them away.<\/p>\n
On the last day of school, she handed me one final drawing.<\/p>\n
This time, she drew both of us\u2014standing side by side.<\/p>\n
On the back, she wrote: \u201cThis is you being nice to me when no one else was.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I just sat there, staring at it.<\/p>\n Later, I learned she had been moved between foster homes all year. Nothing in her life stayed the same\u2014except school. And apparently, I was the only adult who smiled at her every morning.<\/p>\n Those drawings I thought were insults?<\/p>\n They were her way of seeing me. Of holding on. Of saying, you matter to me.<\/em><\/p>\n It broke something open in me.<\/p>\n We never really know what someone is carrying, especially a child. The smallest things\u2014a smile, a kind word, showing up\u2014can mean everything to them.<\/p>\n Now I keep that last drawing where I can see it.<\/p>\n Because sometimes, what looks like criticism\u2026 is actually connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I teach 3rd grade. One of my students always drew pictures of me\u2014big teeth, wild hair, wrinkles. Other teachers joked, \u201cShe\u2019s mocking you!\u201d I laughed it off, but something told me to keep every single one. They weren\u2019t flattering. Honestly, some were hard to look at. But I never threw them away. On the last …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5497,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5495\/revisions\/5497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}