Third Grade Teacher Shares Sad Notes From Students

Kyle Schwartz is a third grade teacher in Colorado.

A few years ago, she started asking her students to complete the following sentence as part of an insightful assignment:

“I wish my teacher knew …"

The responses Schwartz received were far more powerful than she could have ever imagined, even though she already knew that 90 percent of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch.

“That means they are living below or very close to the federal poverty line,” Schwartz told Us Weekly.

“I wanted to know more about their lives and how I could better [support] them. Instead of making assumptions about them, I decided to let them tell me what I needed to know.”

And what follows are the children's responses. They are both eye-opening and heart-breaking...