Poster - Blessing for Educators of Young Children

Text: Jack Manno © 2021, Art: Elise Sommers © 2023
A soulful and witty tribute to the remarkable, critical and undervalued work of early childhood educators.

Drawn from Blessings for Times Like These by Jack Manno.

Here's the full text:

Blessing for the Educators of Young Children:
For Cora Cool- Mihalyi

May all your days be like your best teaching day: quiet when you shush, attentive when you speak, responsive when you question and loving 
when you love.  

May the title “Educator of the Young” be a more praise-worthy title than Celebrity or Executive. 

May funders, politicians, reporters and principals stop often to ask you what it is that you most need today. 

May there be many occasions when you set aside all the guides, all the rulebooks, all the reforms, expectations and norms; time when you realize that you know exactly what to do and you do it well. 

May students remember that you planted the joy of understanding. May it yield abundantly in their hearts and sneak up upon them unexpectedly years later as the sweet remembrance of the time they learned compassion. 

May our world finally stop being too busy to notice what the children need! 

May no child ever again be told she can’t sing.

May your work be well funded and may there be no more fundraisers. No more book sales, no candy, no store receipts, no dance-a-thons.  May you stand proudly before the Community exactly as you are: Blessed. Deserving. And with nothing for sale but your time, your skills and your attention.

May space for children be the best designed of all spaces; where clutter miraculously organizes itself, where the light always shifts just enough for the curious to remain curious, where the air refreshes and reassures the children that they are 
never all alone.

So May It Be