Apple pies, apple chips, apple sauce, apple cider.....

A teacher’s first day will always be somewhat daunting. You never know how they will react to you. To have anywhere between 20-40 pairs of eyes bore down on you, to risk uncontrollable chaos, to risk having those eyes refuse to look at you, to risk having objects thrown at you, tricks and pranks played on you, it takes multiple levels of courage and self-assurance to walk into that classroom for the first time.

 

The kids were in usual humdrum. She persevered. Not too bad, she thought. She couldn’t quite vouch how much they had gained from the lesson, but she felt she had survived it fair enough.

 

Class was dismissed.

 

As the children fell into a stream out the door, a small little girl hung back. She looked at her new little student. The girl had an apple in her hands. She walked up to her teacher and held it out.

 

“Please, teacher” came two careful words from the student. The teacher stared at the girl for a while. Normally the phrase meant a student needed help opening something; like a bag of chips. So what did the girl need her to do to the apple?

 

The little girl somehow knew she had gotten the phrase wrong. She muttered a few words to her friends. It was obvious to the new teacher that English was as far away a language to them as Africa was to Polar Bears.

 

“It’s for too” another voice piped up. Finally the teacher understood. “It’s for you” she corrected them. Then she turned to the apple.

 

Memories want back to childhood cartoons where it was customary for students to come to school and present an apple to the teacher as a gift. Back in those days, teachers’ wages didn’t add up much so students would bring in pickings from their yard for their teachers (or so the story goes). The apple would then be placed at the far left hand corner of the teacher’s table as the morning lessons began.

 

Snap back to reality, the teacher was more than elated at this small gesture. At least, this one girl had accepted her. She had made this gesture to show her welcome. The teacher gave a small cry in delight and took the apple. The little girls were excited that the teacher had accepted their gift. The teacher carefully polished it and placed it in its rightful corner on her table. She promised to eat it at break time.

 

 

 

The next day, she received 40 apples.