“O Captain! My Captain!”: An Open Letter to That Teacher

By Diana Vidals

There were many reasons I felt compelled to write this letter.

To start, education, and the people who dedicate their lives to it, have increasingly come under attack by certain political forces. The ripple effect of these attacks reaches millions of Americans, threatening their livelihoods and access to knowledge. On top of that, educators are rarely given the recognition they deserve. And finally, I’m graduating in 50 days (at the time I wrote this). In the middle of finishing classes and preparing for the big day, I found myself thinking about a particular teacher.

School of Rock (2003)

I think we’ve all had that teacher: the one who really saw us. The kind who understood who we were beneath the noise of adolescence, and who permitted us to be curious, expressive, even bold. Someone like Ms. Honey from Matilda, or Mr. Keating in Dead Poets Society. Or the fun ones, like Ms. Frizzle in The Magic School Bus or Mr. Finn from School of Rock.

Matilda (1996)

During my years in public school, I’ve had many good teachers, a few great ones—but none quite like my seventh-grade Social Studies teacher, Ms. P.

My middle school sat in a low-income neighborhood, severely underfunded and, at the time, labeled one of the most dangerous in the state. That label, and everything that came with it, led many to dismiss us. It was not uncommon for adults to assume we weren’t worth the investment. But Ms. P didn’t see it that way.

Her eighth-period class was transformative. Through her lessons, I learned that American history wasn’t just a parade of powdered wigs and founding fathers. It was the Navajo code talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, César Chávez, the suffragettes. Her desk was always covered in Post-it notes, scribbled with questions from students—each one she would return to the next day, proving that our curiosity was never overlooked.

What stayed with me most, though, was the way she viewed the world—and more importantly, our place in it. Her classroom was filled with children of color, many from immigrant families or unstable homes. Rather than pity us or write us off, she empowered us. She made it clear that the world was much bigger than our zip code, and that we had every right to shape it.

I was in middle school during Trump’s first term—a turbulent time. It was Ms. P who first taught me about the First Amendment. When my classmates and I organized a walkout in support of the Parkland victims, she stood by us. When I started asking questions about women’s rights, she handed me books. She introduced me to activists and world leaders I’d never heard of. She gave me tools I didn’t yet know how to use.

Almost a decade later, there’s one memory that still lives in me like it happened yesterday. I was shy, often invisible among my peers, and painfully aware of how little I fit in. Most teachers didn’t know what to do with that, but Ms. P did. She handed me a copy of Tupac Shakur’s poem The Rose That Grew from Concrete, and later, Starry Night. Through his words, she helped me see value in being different.

Starry Night by Tupac Shakur

Today, I credit her with a lot. The values I hold most dear—my belief in education, my desire to understand more, my empathy—they all trace back to that classroom, and to the teacher who saw something in me long before I saw it in myself.