Dear Class,

I love to teach and I love to learn. When I was taking all my classes online at Gusto University because of COVID and the coup I emailed Papa Al, my grandfather in America. He is me several years ago when taking my Gusto classes online.

I must have written something that bothered him. He teaches classes online in America. I soon got a reply. He gave me a test and wanted to email the answer back to him. Papa Al wanted me to send him a grade that I would give myself about how smart I thought I was. It was funny because I had to pick from these choices Papa Al gave me A 90-100%, B 80-89%, C 70-79%. I chose 80 B-.

Papa Al when he gets upset he uses the word rattled. My answer rattled him. He told me that he loved me but I was wrong. He thought that I was very smart.

Papa Al told me a story when he was my age, his family moved from a regular school to a super school. He compared him and me to each other. The new school made him feel less than he was. He said that we both didn’t understand our capabilities. We had to be smarter than we thought.

Last fall I took a class Papa Al taught online in America where he teaches. It was fun to learn online at an American college. I liked how he asked questions. We had to write essays and replied to each other in the class. He always pushed us to do better than we thought that we could do. I’m now take an English composition class online this semester.

Now I’m teaching and you are my class. You all can do better than you think you can. I learned that lesson and want you to learn the same lesson. We can do better than we think we can.

Buddha said many things about education. Here is one of them, “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” This is another one, “Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.”