“To Sir with Love……..what can I give you in return……”
The words of these songs long echo in one’s ears reminding one of the classroom.
Behind every vivid memory there is the teacher who told us stories and taught us to tie our shoes, took us to the pond to see the tadpoles, helped us learn how to share, put things away and wait for our turn. She provided a learning environment rich & colorful with stimulating resources and activities, and yet had the grace and patience to allow us to indulge .She handled the rare discipline problem with gentle good humor and managed to treat each of us as though we mattered more than anything in the entire world.
“Teacher” and “mentor” are conscious, deliberate roles. But an inadvertent teacher can be anyone – a friend, a boss, a casual acquaintance, a relative, a stranger. So unassuming is their instruction that it may take years or decades before a recipient realizes the lasting import of the gifts they bestowed.
These unwitting gifts prompt an appreciative recipient to ask: What can I give to someone? A word of encouragement, a compliment, a skill, an idea that might open new doors?
Teachers! this post is dedicated to you because many a times you do not realize that you are the decisive element in the classroom. It is your personal approach that creates the climate. It is your daily moods that make the weather. As a teacher, you possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or an instrument of inspiration. You can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is your response that decides whether a crises will be escalated or de-escalated, and child humanized or de-humanized.
Too many people in the general public continue to think that teaching is a job that anyone can do. Wrong! Teaching is a special calling. Teaching is a mission.