Brighten Your Day

When I was a kid, I went to a very expensive private school. Most of the families were very wealthy, but some were barely scraping by to afford the tuition, and some were on scholarships in families that could barely afford rent. My family was one of the fairly well off ones.

The school also had field trips, some were just $5-10, but some were $50-100 per kid. None covered by scholarships.

An old teacher of mine heard my mom passed 4 years ago. She called me today- she'd just found my number through other people.

She told me about how my mom would show up to the office on field trip days for mine and my sisters classes, she'd ask for the teacher, and then she'd ask how many kids were staying behind because they couldn't pay. Then she'd cover their fees.

She'd also have the teachers call her if a parent couldn't afford school supplies or a required book, and she'd buy it and have the teacher give it to them privately. If a birthday was coming up and the parents hadn't said they were sending cake(school required 2 or more days notice), she had them teacher email her the night before. We lived in a building that had a grocery store with a good bakery. So she'd pick up cupcakes for the kid in the morning and drop them off at school. She'd always told me the parents ordered them and asked her to pick them up.

I know that's along the lines of giving out money. But it wasn't about the money for her. She told the teachers it was so no kid would feel left out, because she was always the financially excluded child growing up and knew how it could negatively impact their education.