It is teacher appreciation week and there are certainly many great teachers working in today’s classrooms to inspire today’s youth. They work far more than 40 hours a week and have passion and energy to burn. I have worked with teachers across the K-12 range over the years and I appreciate them all. Kindergarten teachers have the challenge of guiding 5-year-olds through the basics of good behavior and paying attention that will get them ready to learn. Learning to be a “line leader” is no cake walk. Middle school and high school teachers deal with the drama of teens as they come of age. God Bless them all!
If you have school aged kids, please take the time to thank their teachers this week or next, but certainly before the year is out. Everyone needs to hear that they are doing a good job, especially teachers. And although that is appropriate for teachers working today, I thought I would remind everyone about those special teachers in our own lives that made a difference when we were in school. We may not have realized the impact that these people made on us at the time, but I for one think about them often.
For me, my second-grade teacher, who’s name I cannot recall, saw something in a very shy child and gave me a job. I was sent to other classrooms to ask each teacher for the cardboard backs of writing pads, common back in the 1960s. We cut those pads into squares and made flash cards to help us learn addition and subtraction. That teacher helped me emerge from my shell. I wish I still had one of those cards.
My fifth-grade teacher was Mrs. Schales, who I adored. She too gave me a job – knocking out the chalk from the erasers she used each day. I gladly stayed after the bell rang, and before my bus arrived, to beat as much dust out of those things as I could. I think that I still have a bit of chalk dust in my lungs. My junior high teachers were not quite as memorable, but I do credit many of my high school teachers for the knowledge I gained but also for their interest in my future.
I would not have contemplated college, if not for Mr. Barras, my biology teacher, who told me that if I really wanted it, I could go to school and be a biologist. My family did not have the resources to send me, but he helped arrange a work study job that did the trick. As I progressed through college, the lessons I had learned about the art of the written language from multiple high school English teachers helped me learn to be a better writer. I think of them often as I find myself using a few too many adjectives or adverbs in a sentence. I can “hear” Mrs. Garber saying, “Now Mark, how many adjectives do you really need for those nouns?”
Those people may not have known where I would have landed in life, but they gave me the tools to get there. We all have Mrs. Schales, Mrs. Garber, and Mr. Barras in our past that made a difference in our lives. They saw something in us. They paid attention and helped us become better people.
So, for this year’s teacher appreciation week, take a moment to remember those special teachers in your past. Best of all, if they are still alive, reach out and thank them for their efforts. We all inspire people that we meet in some way or another. But teachers are on the front line of that challenge, and we owe them so much.