"People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved..."
It has been a difficult year. I’ve been reflecting on the people I am so thankful for – everyone from front-line health workers to grocery store staff to the delivery folks in NYC that have helped this city survive during the pandemic. As we close out the final term of the 2020 school year in Zambia, I’m especially grateful for all of the teachers who went to extraordinary lengths this year to ensure that our students could continue their education. Their work has inspired me each day since schools closed in March; I’m eternally humbled and grateful for their work. And so, today, I wanted to honor a teacher whose name you may not recognize but whose student you likely will: Anne Sullivan Macy.
Sullivan was the eldest daughter of Irish immigrants, born in Massachusetts in 1866. She was raised in extreme poverty, with a difficult family situation, and her mother died from tuberculosis when Sullivan was only 9 years old. She spent seven years of her childhood in an almshouse in Tewksbury, MA, where inmates included women that were physically ill, mentally ill, and alcoholics requiring treatment, and conditions were deplorable. In 1880, blind from an untreated trachoma, she was sent to the Perkins School for the Blind and received an operation which improved her sight. She graduated from Perkins School for the Blind in 1886, when she was 20 years old, as the valedictorian of her class.
In August of 1886, the Director of the Perkins School for the Blind, asked Sullivan if she was interested in working a family in Tuscumbia, Alabama. He told her that their six-year-old daughter, had been deaf and blind since the age of 19 months because of a severe illness. Since that time the baby had grown into a wild and increasingly uncontrollable child. The parents had contacted the famous inventor and educator of the deaf, Alexander Graham Bell for help. He, in turn, had put them in touch with the Perkins School for the Blind.
And so it came to be that Anne Sullivan Macy met a little girl named Helen Keller, and taught her to communicate by spelling words in her hand. Keller was frustrated at first, because she did not understand that every object had a word uniquely identifying it. But after a breakthrough where Sullivan successfully taught her the word “water”, Keller moved ahead with amazing speed. Sullivan encouraged Keller's parents to send the child to the Perkins School for the Blind where she could have an appropriate teaching. Hellen Keller went on to become a beloved American author, political activist, and lecturer, and the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. But none of this would have been possible if Sullivan had not been the incredible, patient, and determined teacher that she was.
“People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.” – Ann Sullivan Macy
Left to Right: A portrait of Anne Sullivan, Anne working with Helen, and an early letter Helen wrote in 1887.
Our Impact Network students each have the potential to become the next author, activist, leader, business person, inventor. But they can only reach their full potential with the work that our teachers do – day in and day out – in our classrooms. We believe in the potential of each and every one of our 6,000 scholars, and it is our collective responsibility to make sure that they receive the best education that we can provide them. Congratulations to each of them for completing this 2020 school year and we are all rooting for them in 2021!
-Reshma