“In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.” Albert Einstein
While the issues we face, the struggles people endure and the injustice can be deadly, the small things we do in our every day life and work matter. You never know what difference it will make for a colleague, student or parent when you recognize their value, provide a resource to ease their suffering, or encourage them to see a reason for hope to persevere.
In my conversations with teachers, I hear about what it means to a student when a teacher notices what he is choosing to read and offers a suggestion for the next book. Or a teacher provides a complex, interesting real life math challenge that requires several tasks and takes weeks to think about and solve. Or a teacher provides time and space for a student to be listened to in the course of a hard day. You never know how that will carry forward for a person’s life and the possibility of how that person will pay it forward for others.