It is your birthday. Just like every year, your friends text you, your cousins call, and a letter from your 1st grade teacher shows up at your doorstep.
David Weinstein, a former 1st grade teacher at Pierce School, sends cards to 450 of his former students on every one of their birthdays. Weinstein’s tradition began at the end of his first year teaching 1st grade, over three decades ago, and his students say they cherish both his cards and the memories they made with him.
Weinstein said that he knew birthdays were so important to his students and hoped that reaching out to them would show that he cared.
“I was like, ‘I’ve been with these students for 180 days. It’s just the beginning of their education, the beginning of their lives, and we’ve had these relationships that we’ve formed,’” Weinstein said. “I wanted to maintain those relationships, because there’s so much education, adventure and life ahead of all these students.”
By the time Weinstein moved on from teaching 1st grade, he had 450 students he was in touch with and sending birthday cards to. When he breaks the card writing process down into the course of a year, Weinstein ends up writing one to two cards a day.
“There’s definitely people who would be like, ‘You’re a little crazy to be sending out so many birthday cards,’” Weinstein said. “If you do 450 cards in a day then, yeah, that would be tiring, but one or two cards a day, that’s doable.”
Even after almost ten years of writing hundreds of cards, Weinstein’s cards always contain personal messages, according to sophomore Rubina Bhambi, a member of Weinstein’s final class.
“They were never generic cards; there was always some kind of personal message in there,” Bhambi said. “He also used to have this monkey named Banana, who he always used to talk about all the time. So he used to sign [the cards] ‘Mr. BMT (Big Mean Teacher) and Banana.’ It was just nice to get because no other teacher does that.”
Senior Sasha Harwin celebrated her 18th birthday recently and said receiving the card always makes her excited and makes her reminisce about her elementary school years.
“It makes me feel very nostalgic and happy to know that he’s just thinking about his students,” Harwin said. “I saw him recently and not only did he remember my name, but he remembered my brother who didn’t even have him [as his teacher].”
For Weinstein, birthday cards help him stay connected to former students. Even now, Weinstein occasionally grabs coffee with former students if they are passing through town.
“We’ll just sit down and talk in person and talk about life and talk about all their careers,” Weinstein said. “These careers that these former students are in now, I usually don’t understand. It’s like, ‘Wow, what does that even mean?’ It’s a great learning experience for me.”
Sophomore Trygve Driscoll also had Weinstein and said he appreciated his ability to match his students.
“He jokes about himself, at the end of the card he’ll write ‘The BMT’—the Big Mean Teacher—but he was definitely not the big mean teacher, but a very nice teacher to all of us,” Driscoll said.
Bhambi said she appreciates Weinstein’s effort in creating memorable experiences for her.
“Always sending birthday cards makes me feel special,” Bhambi said. “He just knows how to make people laugh and he knows how to make every moment special with you whenever you’re with him.”