Bryant: Teacher saved letter for 23 years

Twenty-three years ago, M.J. Iuppa took out some stationery bordered with flowers and wrote a letter to her daughter's second-grade teacher. She was pleased that Todd Brindle was teaching her child not just to read, but also to find joy in the act.

"You have created a wonderful menu to encourage the love of reading," she wrote. "I appreciate your daily efforts to make this year memorable for Meghan Rose."

A few weeks ago, Iuppa passed through Brindle's class at Barclay Elementary School in Brockport. He's teaching third grade now and she travels to different schools doing poetry workshops. Iuppa thought it possible that Brindle would remember teaching her daughter Meghan more than two decades ago.

She never dreamed, though, that he would still have her letter in his desk. When he pulled it out to show it to her, she thought she was going to cry. "Think of all the pieces of paper that man has had in 23 years," she said.

But Brindle kept the letter, through many years and many classroom moves. He said he's not much of a collector, but it touched him. "It gives you a real sense of worth as a teacher when you read something like that," he said.

Iuppa, a teaching poet and the director of St. John Fisher College's visual and performing arts program, said that she appreciated the fact that her daughter would come home excited about books and book discussions and various reading contests that her teacher had cooked up. "Being hooked on reading is a guaranteed success in future studies," Iuppa wrote in the letter to Brindle, which is dated Feb. 3, 1992.

Back then, teachers were using the "whole language" philosophy for language arts instruction. They were encouraged to immerse children in as much good literature as possible, without much emphasis on phonetics and spelling. The thought was that children would pick up these concepts naturally. Brindle said this method had its strengths, but didn't fit all students. Common Core curriculum offers a different approach to language arts, one of many things that has changed since 1992.

Brindle mainly teaches math now and says that 8- and 9-year-olds are being asked to master concepts — like the distributive property — that he would never have even dreamed of introducing 15 years ago. Much more is expected of teachers as well, said Brindle, noting that the student teachers who enter his classroom face a much more rigorous journey than he did years ago.

Many things about education will never change, like the value of a teacher who is enthusiastic and teaches kids not just to do well on tests but also to really love the subject matter. Brindle remembers that his own third-grade teacher, Miss Vellekoop, had a lot of energy and led the class in fun games related to what they were learning. He remembers discovering how reading could open doors to new worlds. "I probably read every dinosaur book in the library," he said.

Though these days he focuses on math, Brindle is still the "read-aloud" teacher in his classroom. He still gives life to books like Matilda, Old Yeller and Call it Courage. He still does different voices for all of the outrageous characters in Holes by Louis Sachar.

Seeing the letter that a young mother wrote to a young teacher 23 years ago, Iuppa is glad that she took the time to say thanks. "I think he kept it because it came from my heart," she said. "People should act on telling other people what they are doing well. You don't know how someone might hold onto that."

EBRYANT@DemocratandChronicle.com