- April 24, 2024
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It’s that time of the year; back to school! Thinking back to my school years, I always had a love/hate relationship with the beginning of the school year. Excited to see my friends and to learn new things, but sad to not be able to spend my days sleeping in and bumming it at the beach.
When I graduated college, I had this strange feeling of sadness when I saw all the back-to-school posts on Facebook. I wanted to be going back to school too! Weird. I still get a twinge of that feeling. The desire to go back to when life wasn’t so cluttered. When even though I overloaded my class schedule, worked for the school newspaper, did an internship and worked at a restaurant, there seemed to be so many more hours in the day. My main objective in life was to learn.
I’m lucky enough that in my job as a journalist I am still learning new things every day. And when a new school year starts, it means a new year of documenting amazing projects happening throughout the county. Walking through the halls of all the schools I attended as a child brings me back to the great teachers and projects that I had growing up in Flagler County.
I recently got a card from one of those teachers.
I walked into the Palm Coast Observer office last week to find a letter on my desk. The return address read “CODY.” Inside was a card and three photocopied pages. It was from my kindergarten- and first-grade teacher, Linda Cody. Yes, I had her both years. She retired from teaching July 1 and had been going through her box of “treasures.” She found a letter I wrote to her the summer of 1994.
“Hard to believe that it was mailed to me 20 years ago,” she wrote in the card. “I am so proud of you!”
The letter wasn’t anything extraordinary. I inquired about her summer, thanked her for a book that she sent me, asked where she got it, and asked if she was getting things ready for the new school year. (Apparently, I’ve always been a big question asker.) I then drew a picture of flowers, clouds and a sun to fill up the blank space on the page.
I didn’t think there was anything profound about the letter, but she had kept it all these years. It was one of her treasures from her teaching career. I’m fighting back tears as I think about it. How special that this one little letter meant so much. And how amazing that Miss Linda thought to send a copy of it back to me.
I was so lucky to have such an amazing teacher. Miss Linda touched the lives of so many children in Flagler County. While in her class at Wadsworth Elementary School, I learned so many basics of life. I know, how much can you learn as a 5- and 6-year-old? But, it’s the truth! I even became a published author for the first time in Miss Linda’s class. I wrote a story about my cats, illustrated it myself and it was published in a hardcover book all of my own. We even had an author’s day when we dressed up and presented our books.
Thankfully, my writing has improved greatly since my book and this letter were written. My artwork has improved a little too, thanks to my introduction to the camera — drawing, not so much.
Thank you, Miss Linda for being such a wonderful teacher and continuing to encourage me even into my adult years. I know there are many students out there that would agree with me when I say that you were a big
influence in my life.
