306 Comments

What an inspiring story! We all love you Bob because you are such a dynamo! So talented and funny and brilliant! You are the quintessential teacher and thank god for you! You were lucky and talented so you got the attention to inspire you! I only had a couple of teachers who believed in me but that was enough! Teachers should be paid 3 times what they are paid but the pay is not what makes a good teacher. It’s the nobility and kindness. I really do believe you love your students! What a great man!

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Jun 17, 2022Liked by Robert Reich

A single caring consistent adult is the simplest, most effective factor in a child’s resilience and success. It’s not rocket science. But it can produce rocket scientists.

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Your tribute to Alice Camp warms my heart. I'm a retired teacher, and never got thanked much for all my efforts - from kids, parents or administrators. Teachers are always trying to fill others with confidence, curiosity and motivate them - but nobody fills them up. This

did!

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As a long time teacher I can attest to the fact that a heartfelt thank you note from a student at the close of a school year is the best gift imaginable -- makes it all worthwhile. Just yesterday I go a note from a student letting me know what a profound impact my class had upon her. I thought I had been missing the mark with her all year. That’s one for the annals of “you just never know.” I cried on the patio as I read it ...

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Jun 17, 2022Liked by Robert Reich

We should honor teachers, providing them with decent working conditions and wages. From first grade to university. A country that does not recognize the tremendous investment they represent for its own benefit is bound to go down the drain morally, politically, and economically after two or three generations (sadly, this came true in European countries as well as in the U.S.). They, not Wall Street, are our collective access to freedom, peace, and prosperity.

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Excellent! Call me a commie, but I remember being very impressed when I learned that in the USSR, salaries for everyone were about the same. A doctor for instance, made a bit more than the orderly, but the disparity was nothing like the chasms we see currently in the west. The people who actually contribute most to our society like farmers, truck drivers, cleaners, teachers, and food service workers are often the lowest paid - while those who gamble with our hard-earned money make fortunes. We are truly sick in the way we have allowed money to rule.

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Teaching is great, and great teachers are great. Under-funded schools, and the public education funding drain of private school vouchers should be rectified immediately. Private schools should be eliminated. Funding should come from the General Fund, not from property taxes or anything else tied to the local economy. One of our most significant shared values should be pride in the high and homogeneous quality of public education at every school.

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For me, it was Gail Lathrop. She was the epitome of boundless energy, enthusiasm and encouragement - an amazing 7th grade English teacher who saw in me something I certainly didn’t see in myself. She died of cancer years ago - but I remember her with nothing less than awe and appreciation. Teaching determines the future more than any other profession - why this isn’t just accepted as common sense is mind boggling.

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Thank you for reminding us of how much we owe our former (and current) teachers. When people claim to be "self-made" I know there was someone--often a teacher--who believed in them and helped them to believe in themselves. None of us make it alone.

I taught university for two years in Sierra Leone, West Africa. About a year after I came back from Sierra Leone, I got a thank-you letter from one of my students there. It really moved me, especially as the cost of the air letter he sent me would have bought him a day's food.

I realized I’d not thanked my former teachers. Of the three most influential professors in my first year at university, I could track down only one. I wrote him, and we stayed in touch for some time. He even came up to Canada, where I now teach, for a Leonard Cohen Conference at which I joined him. Only now, as I am about to retire from teaching university, do I realize fully how much such thank-you letters mean.

I'm sure you've received many such letters, Dr. Reich, and well-deserved ones;; you strike me as an outstanding teacher (if you can make someone with dyscalculia like me understand economics, you've got to be amazing in class). Your readers owe Alice Camp a big thank-you for empowering you.

Meanwhile, we are driving our best teachers out of the profession. I recently saw a letter from a teacher in Texas who is quitting; she can no longer bear having to teach her terrified third-graders what to do in case of a school shooter.

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Jun 17, 2022Liked by Robert Reich

I wish all teachers could read this.

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How wonderful of you to remember Mrs. Camp and other teachers who impacted your life! They obviously did great things for you because you are a very gifted writer. Thanks for sharing..

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How wonderful. I had a teacher in 6th grade who let me take care of the class library. Then I had two great junior and senior high librarians and I became a librarian working in academic libraries for 42 years. I feel the same way about the many students I got to know and help. Teachers are underpaid and under appreciated!

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Robert Reich ; Your students are lucky.

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sigh Professor thank you. As is often the case when I read your newsletters, I am jealous. Not jealous in the sense that I want you not to have what you have but jealous in the sense that I want what you have and had. I am not as smart as you, although I am smarter than most, My illness, both physical and mental, has cost me more than you, or at least, I have not been able to overcome the effects of my illness. I will never have as long and productive career as you, even if all my symptoms disappeared today. I do not know how to make myself or the world better. #Ithurtsmyheart. I should go back to sleep. perhaps things will look better in the morning.

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Jun 17, 2022·edited Jun 17, 2022

You can thank Mrs. Camp and all the other wonderful teachers you never thanked by supporting teachers any way you can. Write about their value and how each one inspired you and helped you become the person you are today. Then, write about them again, again, and again….

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Agree fully, although I did not appreciative my teachers very much when I was a child, now that I have a child I go out of my way to thank them for their work. I note that - like every profession - there are good, acceptable and crappy ones and wish we had a way to better rank them so that there was a clearly defined merit system and this was used to ensure the good ones get paid better.

Robert - Would love for you to propose how this could be done...have any great ideas?

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