I love you, teachers.

Our daughter, a high school freshman, had an end-of-year Spanish project due today. Each of the students was given a tale from a book of stories and asked to prepare a lesson for the class. Sarah was assigned an odd story about a dog who liked to collect rocks and then spent several days practicing and honing her lesson plan. She was ready.

After school, under my careful interrogation, she admitted that the lesson went "fine" and then hit the couch with her phone, a snack and the remote. Apparently, all is well.

I was reminded of her first attempts at Spanish years ago. Señor Rios had placed twelve pictures on the wall, one for each of their vocabulary words. As luck would have it, Sarah was the first to be handed a pointer and instructed to identify each picture, standing in front of the whole class. As we climbed into the car to go home that afternoon, I asked, worried, "How was that for you?" Our painfully-shy-in-public first grader said, "I got 13 out of 12. There are two words for ink pen."

"Wow," I replied quietly, wondering how she had managed that challenge, "What did Señor Rios say?"

"I can't tell you," she said and clammed up completely.

All the way home, her older brother and I offered up possibilities, hoping to solve the mystery:

"Good job?"
"Bravo?"
"Well done?"
"¡Prima!"
"Awesome!"
"¡Muy bien!"
"¡Excellente!?"
"Way to go!"

Baffled, we must have guessed more than a hundred times, but she rejected each one. Though we begged, she refused to elaborate.

Not long after we arrived home, Sarah silently handed me a small slip of paper folded in half, then skedaddled to her room and closed the door. When I unfolded the paper, reading the three words she had written, I immediately understood why she had been too embarrassed to tell us what the teacher had exclaimed in front of the class.

"I love you."

In a moment of exuberance for a job well done, those powerful words from a teacher might have been just the wrong thing to say to the wrong student. Or just the right thing to say to the right student. From Sarah's reaction, it was hard to tell.

By the age of six or seven, she had heard the words "I love you" countless times, primarily from adoring extended family and protective parents. But as they grow into adolescence, healthy children need three or four or more non-parent role models and mentors and others to hold them accountable, to encourage, to teach, to discipline, to know and yes, even to love them.

Near the end of another school year, I'm so grateful for teachers and for the important part they play in helping our children discover and use their gifts, make and learn from mistakes, take turns and share, listen and speak and dream. ¡Gracias!