The Saddest Letter Ever Written

Years back, I saw a strange movie called The Saddest Music in the World. It was a contest to see which culture could sing the saddest song—Icelandic ballads, American blues, Portuguese fado, Irish laments and so on. 

I forget who the winner was, but if the contest was the saddest Facebook post in the last five years, I would vote for the one I read yesterday. Of course, there’s a lot of competition out there! But this one was an arrow that landed straight in the heart of my life’s worker as a teacher, as a crusader for education, as an advocate for children’s happiness. It captures precisely the poisons inside the Kool Aid that school boards and administrators are serving to the school community. Kudos to Eleanor Vance for her eloquence, honest and caring.

 

After forty years in the classroom, my career ended with a single sentence from a six-year-old: “My dad says people like you are obsolete.”

 

He didn’t say it with malice. He wasn’t mocking me. His voice was flat—matter-of-fact—like he was reading the weather. “You don’t even have TikTok,” he added.

 

My name is Eleanor Vance, and today I packed up my kindergarten classroom for the very last time.

 

When I started teaching back in the early eighties, it felt like a calling. We didn’t do it for the paycheck—we did it because shaping young minds felt sacred. Parents dropped off homemade cookies during conferences. Children handed you crayon hearts on construction paper. The look on a child’s face when they sounded out their first sentence was worth more than any bonus check.

 

But little by little, the job changed. The joy drained out, replaced by paperwork, metrics, and exhaustion. Somewhere along the way, the world stopped seeing teachers as mentors and started treating us like customer-service reps who couldn’t hang up.

 

My evenings used to be spent cutting stars out of yellow paper or stapling artwork to the bulletin board. Now they were spent logging “behavioral incidents” into a district app—because documentation, not empathy, keeps you safe from lawsuits.

 

I’ve been yelled at by parents in front of my own students. Once, a mother livestreamed it on Facebook while her son giggled behind her phone. I stood there, holding my ground, while my principal later advised me to “be more flexible with modern parents.”

 

The children have changed, too. It isn’t their fault. They arrive tired, anxious, overstimulated. Tiny hands clutching tablets instead of toys. Some can’t hold a pencil correctly. Others don’t know how to share or wait their turn. And somehow, we’re expected to fix all of it—twenty-five kids at a time, on a budget that couldn’t buy enough glue sticks.

 

My cozy reading nook—beanbags, picture books, and sunshine—was replaced by “data dashboards” and “measurable outcomes.”

 

A new principal once told me, “Try to be less nurturing, Eleanor. We need measurable results.” As if warmth were unprofessional.

 

Still, I stayed for the small miracles. The shy child who whispered, “You’re like my grandma.”

 

The note that said, “I feel safe here.” 

 

The little boy who looked up one day, grinning, and said, “I read the whole page!” Those moments were my lifeline—the reminders that even small kindnesses could outlast the noise.

 

But the past few years broke something in me. Violence crept into our hallways. Teachers left mid-semester, burnt out or broken. We filled out crisis forms more than lesson plans. The laughter in the staff room thinned into silence. It wasn’t just fatigue—it was grief. I could feel myself fading into the background, like an old bulletin board no one takes down.

 

So this morning, I locked my classroom door one final time. I peeled faded finger paintings from the walls and found a box of old thank-you notes from my 1998 class. One read:

 

“Thank you for loving me when I was hard to love.” That one undid me.

 

There was no retirement party. No speeches. No cake with my name in frosting. The new principal—young enough to be my former student—gave me a quick handshake while checking his phone. He called me “Ma’am.”

 

I left behind my sticker box and my old rocking chair—the one that had rocked through four decades of story time. I took only the memories that couldn’t fit in a box: tiny arms around my neck, giggles echoing after recess, the trust in a child’s eyes when they called me “teacher.”

 

They can digitize curriculum, standardize testing, even replace chalkboards with tablets—but they can’t replicate that.

 

I miss when teaching felt like partnership, not combat. When schools were communities, not corporations. When “teacher” meant guide, not babysitter with a degree.

 

If you know a teacher—past or present—thank them. Not with another mug or gift card. With your words. With your understanding. With your respect.

Because in a system that forgets them, teachers are the ones who still remember your children.

 

A moment of silence after this eulogy for the death of genuine education. 

 

And now back to the work of both resistance and community building.  I have seen how the Kool Aid leaks into even the best schools serving organic fresh-squeezed orange juice and we would do well to be vigilant, aware and courageous in what we say “yes” to and what we should adamantly refuse. 

 

And speaking of saying “No!” I hope that all reading this will show up Saturday at one of the 2,500 NO KINGS! rallies happening throughout the United States. The confusion in schools is deeply connected to the tumult in the greater culture and you can’t heal one without the other. See you there!