AÂ spontaneous late night sushi meal with a friend a few weeks ago led to a passionate conversation about teachers. Prompted by the stories of the heroic acts of the teachers from the Sandy Hook events, we recounted some of our favorite teachers.
I can’t tell you what I wore on any given day last week, yet I can easily tell you details about some of my favorite teachers from twenty plus years ago. Miss O’Rourke was one of the “cool” teachers that I had in high school. She didn’t fit the mold of the other, more conservative, teachers in the school, particularly the nuns. She was different, a bit of a rebel, marching to the beat of her own drummer, and I loved going to her class. She listened. She heard. And she taught from the heart.
I will forever be grateful to Sister Jude, a grammar school teacher, for igniting my love for English class and the written word. She was no-nonsense, for sure, but she had such a young and vivacious spirit that you couldn’t help but be inspired. She had a pretty tough-as-nails exterior, but she was warm and caring.
Not all teachers stand out. And for a variety of reasons, they won’t. But oh how lucky we are for the ones that do. The ones that leave such a positive imprint on our memories and hearts that we are forever changed.
When we find a teacher like that in our kids’ classrooms, as parents, we are buoyed. Grateful. Thankful. Because we know that teacher is shaping the person that our kids will become. We know that in 20 years, when the kids have long since moved on, memories of this teacher will be recounted with fondness. It might be a special interest that the teacher took in our child. Or the way the teacher thought of their students as their kids. Or that they had such passion for the subject that they taught, that they ignited the same passion in our own child.
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