Dear Editor:

In education, teachers usually change students every year, but on rare occasion they grow with the students like Erin Gruwell did in Long Beach, California at Freedom Writers. Students are tested on subjects they have been studying so teachers know what they remember, what they understand and on occasion what the subject means to them. With thousands of students teachers see during their career, very few hear of the impact they had on a student.

There is no data on the impact of one person on another. People come and go in our lives just as students come and go in the lives of teachers. To measure teachers on the numerical results of student exams is to deny the value of the immeasurable impact on the life of a student and how that student goes forward. More rare than a teacher learning of their extraordinary impact is a principal learning from a young student that everything she said and expected from the students in her school mattered to the student and to her.

An example of an immeasurable value is one principal at a Brownsville, Brooklyn public school, Mott Hall Bridges Academy. At 13, Vidal Chastanet, by happenstance, met photographer Brandon Stanton. “Who has influenced you most in your life?” was the question and the answer was "My principal, Ms. Lopez."

One of several reasons stood out: “One time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter." Those words at that moment in Vidal’s life had an impact. What Vidal remembered is not in the tests. How that statement influenced him is clear, but also unknown where it will lead. Our grades in class and on exams do not define who we are or what we will be able to accomplish in our future. What matters is everyone — you, me, all of our teachers, parents, pastors, principals, and every student in class.

Everyone benefits from immeasurable human interactions. Testing should never replace immeasurable moments or be used for anything more than an educational tool.

Jarryl Larson

Edgecomb