Today, May 6, is National Teacher Day. If you don’t have a chance to reach out to someone who has endowed you with knowledge along the way, you can do it any time this week, which is Teacher Appreciation Week.
I have been so lucky throughout life to have been in classrooms and in nature, large groups and small gatherings, with people who have opened my eyes to things I would not have otherwise known or seen or tried. I hope each of you has been even half as lucky–actually I hope each of you has been twice as lucky!
Who do you teach? By your example? Your words? Your deeds? Your action, activity, and activism? At every turn we have a chance to teach. To show another a way they may not yet have found on their own. It can be in line at the movies when don’t rant and rave inappropriately at the kid in the box office who has to put up the “SOLD OUT” sign right before you got your ticket. It can be as you walk along the beach and pick up the trash another left behind. It can be when you don’t lay on your horn just because traffic has stopped for some unknown cause. It can be how you wipe off the basin like the little placard in the airplane restroom asks you to. It can be the way you bring civility back to an online comments thread about what some Hollywood ingenue wore to an event. Seeing you be outstanding is inspirational in ways you may never know. You are a teacher.
Give a holler, a shout out, to one or many that taught you along the way. I hope you have your own standouts…that you have your own Mr. Cusey or Mr. Walker or Mr. Underwood or Miss Martin (and that’s just a few from my K-12 years). I have people in my life who are extraordinary teachers in classroom settings–how lucky am I?
Grab an apple, real or virtual, and place it lovingly on a desk. Look at your own desk…did someone put an apple there too?
Change by Doing 