Stories of a teacher

“I am giving a lesson in my new class, first year elementary, of 26 very lively children. As soon as I have laboriously achieved their attention, I hear a knock at the door: it is the caretaker who notifies me that I have a telephone call. It is the mother of Paul; she is stormily separated from her husband with whom she is in perennial quarrel.

In these days, both parents are contesting for the child with questionable actions, and bombard with telephone calls also us, teachers. I had every reason to answer that I cannot go to the telephone, that I am giving a lesson, and that I already imagine what it is about. But in that moment through the legitimate reasoning of a teacher who has been interrupted in her work, a sentence makes its way, from the Word of Life: “Make that I speak always as though this is the last word that I say.” It is an occasion to be vigilant!

I smile to the caretaker and entrust the class to her and I go to the telephone with a new heart. I listen to what I had already imagined… but up to the end, without judging, without letting the “disturbance” that has been created weigh on us. At the end, I succeed in telling Paul’s mother that I understand her, that I comprehend the state of her soul, but that I believe that for the good of Paul, we can put aside the hurt pride and the rancour, and act only for the good of the child. When, a couple of hours later I pass through the corridor, the caretaker comes near to me and tells me: “You know, that mother has telephoned again… she told me just to tell you Thanks.”

Some days ago, while I am leaving school in a hurry, with a thousand programmes to carry out and the shopping to do, I am stopped by Flora, a caretaker of Brazilian origin who only recently works at our Institute. She has to make a written application to the school management, and does not know how to go about it, also because of her language difficulties. I ask myself why, from so many teachers, she asks me who is so busy. The Word of Life invites me once again to “stay awake”: it is Jesus who is asking this! Do I want perhaps to answer that I am in a hurry and that he should ask someone else? I sit with Flora and help her to write the application. Then I propose that she types it with a computer because the presentation is better, but Flora does not know how to use it. We go together in the classroom for informatics and I write it for her, without looking at the watch. Two mornings later, while I am entering the staffroom, Flora stops me and gives me a very beautiful light blue scarf. “You should not have done it, it is not necessary” I tell her. And she answers: “But also I want to be able to love as you have done with me. “

(B.P.-Italia)