Teachers’ Day messages for your mentor

Six messages you could actually send

Continue writing opens that message in the card with the words already in it, so all that is left is to change a word and send it. The last message is the longest of the six, and it is the only one you have to copy across yourself.

1. Happy Teachers' Day. You never had a classroom and you've taught me more than most people who did. Thank you for the time you gave me when there was nothing at all in it for you, and for being honest when encouraging would have been easier.

   Continue writing with message 1

2. Happy Teachers' Day. A good half of how I do this job is copied from watching you do it, mostly on the days when it was going badly. Thank you for letting me watch, and for explaining afterwards what you'd actually been thinking.

   Continue writing with message 2

3. Happy Teachers' Day. You answered the questions I was too embarrassed to ask anybody senior, and you never once made me feel stupid for asking them. That's most of the reason I got through my first two years. Thank you.

   Continue writing with message 3

4. Happy Teachers' Day. Filing you under teacher may not be how you'd describe yourself, but you've been marking my work for years without anybody paying you for it, so the title stands. Thank you. It isn't up for discussion.

   Continue writing with message 4

5. Happy Teachers' Day. I keep coming back to the afternoon you rewrote something of mine line by line and made me say out loud why each change was better. It took you an hour you didn't have. I've done it for other people since.

   Continue writing with message 5

6. Happy Teachers' Day. I've been asked twice this year who taught me to do this job, and both times I've given your name, which is probably the most accurate thing I have ever said in a review. You never called any of it mentoring and you did it for years anyway. Thank you for the hours, for the honesty, and for never once letting it feel like a favour.

   Copy

Writing your own

Say the word out loud. Most workplace mentors were never assigned to you, never got the title, and have no idea you think of them this way — so the first job of the note is simply to tell them. On Teachers’ Day it also lands better than it would in a review, because nobody can mistake it for something you had to write.

Give one concrete hour back. I learned a lot from you cannot be checked and reads like a leaving card. The afternoon you rewrote my draft line by line and made me justify every change is something they will remember from their side too, and it proves the learning happened rather than asserting it.