It’s not about the income but rather the outcomes!
Dr Marion Gillis-Olion — Fayetteville State University
This post was inspired by a dear friend originally from a city I dearly love (Kansas City, represent!) from Katie’s dance studio era whose graduating senior son AJ is arguably one of the most talented hip-hop dancers I’ve ever seen.
I’m telling you now that this kid is seriously going to rock the world in whatever he sets his mind to doing.
Anyway, Nina was having a very well-deserved “proud senior mom” moment where she was telling us about one particular teacher who suggested AJ make a paper aeroplane out of the “Magna Cum Laude” certificate AJ had just received at assembly.
You have to know AJ to really grasp that this teacher really does get and appreciate all of the complicated facets of who AJ is at the very core of his being.
In pictures, he can have this quiet and brooding look that makes you think there’s several metric tonnes of angst bottled up inside and then completely miss his trademark focus and intensity bordering on perfectionism that will then explode on stage when he’s dancing some uber-complicated choreography as if his very life and soul were at stake were he to do a single move incorrectly.
That he makes it look so easy and effortless shows just how formidable an intelligence is quietly at work just under the surface.
The certificate and honour is all well and good and I’m sure deep down in a place AJ will only show to those he’s closest to, he’s certainly aware and proud of all his accomplishments including this one and deservedly so. But through the years of watching him in action, it’s clear what’s most important to AJ is that his absolute best is on display whether it’s in the classroom or in the dance studio or in competition and a certificate isn’t the end-all and be-all some might think it is.
His teacher gets it and really gets AJ. His teacher is likely as proud of AJ as Nina is and can take a measure of pride that he was a significant part of the story that is evolving before us and that will be a tale that will be utterly brilliant once it’s written and performed in the way only AJ can possibly do it justice.
That got me thinking about all of the teachers who not only inspired me through the years but took the next step and actually understood me better than I did myself and helped me discover options and alternatives I’d never have dreamed of in a million years.
Now would seem to be a good time to give them the shout out they were most certainly due for having a such a positive impact on me during the tumultuous years when I was at school and in no small part assured that the future I was heading toward would be a good one.
A Brief Detour To Raleigh (Not This One!)
To say that my father’s side of the family was loaded to the rafters with teachers would be a very grand understatement.
Aunt Oma Lee and Uncle David were kind enough to give Dad and I a tour of the Greater Metropolitan Raleigh area of southern Illinois when we came round for my grandmother Anna Mae’s funeral. Among other points of interest was a small building where she served as teacher in a one-room schoolhouse covering multiple grades not unlike the one you’d see on “Little House on the Prairie”.
By the time I returned to the area over a decade later to attend Aunt Nadine’s funeral and finally had a camera in hand, I tried to find her schoolhouse but wasn’t able to definitively identify it.
More than a few of the McClerren clan have done a turn or two in front of rows of students and endeavoured to inspire in them a love for knowledge and learning.
Or was it respect for authority after being smacked on the hand by a wooden ruler when the pupils were engaging in some sort of mischief when they were supposed to be attending to their lessons? Sometimes I get those mixed up! 🙂
Admittedly, here are the few facts that I’ve gathered through the years that the supporting evidence is fairly impressive:
- My father and his older brother Frank attended her school in Raleigh IL for some number of years. I’m not sure exactly when they moved from Galatia IL to Hutsonville IL for Grandpa to take up his post as a turbine operator at Central Illinois Power so it’s hard to tell how many long they might have been at this school whilst Grandma was teaching but I’m certain it was at least for a couple of grades if not more.
- Being a student in a classroom where your mother is the teacher isn’t quite the joyous experience one would imagine.
- Being the youngest in the room when the lessons are being given to the older kids isn’t a whole lot of fun either.
- Grandma’s style in teaching and maintaining classroom order and discipline was definitely much closer to Miss Taylor (from “Pete’s Dragon”) than it was to Miss Beadle (“Little House on the Prairie”).
OK, I am not meaning #4 to sound mean or disrespectful but when you consider that Grandma was the oldest of her McClerren siblings and was responsible for looking after most of them from a very early age, running an exceptionally tight ship and not being a huge fan of monkey shines amongst her pupils during the school day would be a feature, not a bug! 🙂
I’m sure that Dad being one of the youngest kids in the room certainly coloured his perceptions a bit.
Eventually I could truly appreciate Dad making the observation that the grandparents I was looking at were not the same parents that he grew up with well and that their motivations had changed markedly before Bill Cosby would do his stand-up routine “Himself” and make the exact same statement!
Aunt Nadine, Aunt Betty, Aunt Leone…all of them teachers (and you can add Uncle Roger to that mix as he also taught at Southern Illinois University which was originally chartered as a normal college specifically for training teachers!).
Even Dad would take his turn with students when he did his final tour at Ft Sam Houston at the Army’s Academy of Health Sciences.
So when I tell you that respect for the teaching profession and what they have to go through on a daily basis is in my blood, you can see that I really mean it.
The next post will have the list of teachers who have made their indelible mark upon me and inspired me!