Photo: TikTok
It was a good email, this time.
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Mar 14, 2023
A teacher named Lexie Firment went on TikTok to post about the time when she received an email from a parent after she had just opened her laptop to plan the lessons out for the week.
She labeled the video as a “teacher story time” since other teachers could likely relate, and opened by saying how originally, she had freaked out when she noticed that she had gotten an email from a parent.
The teacher said the parent’s email ended up ‘making her week.’
“When you get an email outside of your school system and it’s a parent, your immediate thought goes to freak out mode,” Firment claims, but she was presently surprised to find that she had been worried about nothing.
Her first thought was “what did I do wrong,” claiming that her “heart immediately sinks,” but the email ended up telling her what she was actually doing right the entire time — teaching.
The parent had talked about how she took her daughters to the movies with their friends Friday night — with the day she sent the email being Sunday — and talked about what happened.
“One of the friends was telling them that Miss Firment, as a track coach, makes them feel uplifted, strong [and is] really encouraging,” she explained,” and that immediately made my entire week and more.”
It may seem like a simple thing to do but Firment's encouragement of her students could be fighting a years-long issue of young women feeling discouraged when it comes to playing sports.
It is well-documented that women and girls play less sport than men. According to the Women's Sports Foundation, by age 14, girls drop out of sports at two times the rate of boys. This is due to a range of factors including lack of access — girls in the U.S. have 1.3 million fewer opportunities to play high school sports than boys have — as well as social stigmas.
Feeling encouraged, supported and empowered while participating in sports at school is vital to ensure girls get the physical, mental, and social benefits of physical education.
Teaching is often thankless work, especially in a country like the United States where the job has felt increasingly unsafe and divided politically, so an email like this probably meant a lot to Firment.
“Sometimes, as a 1st-year teacher in the classroom, I just feel like my brain is everywhere — I’m in such a tizzy,” she explains in the second half of her 70-second clip. “When I’m coaching on the track and I’m put into a position where I feel so confident, a.k.a. I know a lot about running and a lot about track, I feel like I do my best.”
Teaching is not an easy job, and it’s hard to feel established in the role especially when there are so many other educators around you who have likely been there for much longer.
As a 1st-year classroom teacher, Firment might be struggling with fitting in and feeling like she’s making a difference, but she has used this parent’s email as validation that she actually is on the right track.
“That email just goes to show that I am making a difference. Maybe in the classroom, maybe on the track, depends on the day,” she says. “And this was one of the most positive things and just goes to show not every parent email you get is bad.”
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.