In Molly Pollak’s second-floor Manhattan apartment, the spare bedroom is filled with decades of classroom memories.
“Those are all my high school yearbooks,” Pollak says, pointing to a shelf stacked two books deep. “Those are my middle school yearbooks. There’s more over here.”
But after 40 years teaching English to middle and high school students, there’s one book Pollak will never throw away. It’s a big book with a striking orange cover, sitting proudly on a table in the living room.
She received this book a few months ago. It was the end of the school year and the students were taking off for the summer.
But Pollak was taking off for, well, forever — a bittersweet moment in the life of any teacher.
As news of her retirement spread, Ora Bayewitz-Meier, one of Pollak’s former students, reached out to other former students and invited them to write in. They did. Eagerly.
She received 75 letters. These weren’t just a paragraph or two — many are pages long.
“I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that you changed my life,” wrote Rebecca Rosenthal, who took Pollak’s English class in the 1990s.
Letters To The Teacher Celebrate A 40-Year Career
Photos: Alex Welsh for NPR