South Carolina’s teacher of the year gave a speech not long ago to a group of community and business leaders in Greenville.
She talked about lifelong learning and what that has meant in her life and in the lives of the students she has taught Spanish at Fork Shoal Elementary.
It’s an important goal, of course, one that has been embraced by the Vision 2025 committee and Greenville Forward. To make Greenville a community that values learning not just education.
But something beyond the worthy goal stuck out for me in Kelly Nalley’s speech. People. She mentioned Jared, Sonya, Mr. Middleton and Sean.
Jared has a learning disability that makes reading difficult. And he assumed he’d have the same problems with Spanish, But Nalley realized he needed encouragement and brought him through to the point he spent time in Costa Rica and taught himself a Guatemalan language.
Sonya, a girl from a dying mill town, convinced Nalley she should be a teacher. After a talk on self-esteem, making good choices, personal responsibility, Nalley and the children posed for a picture. When Nalley saw it, she was overcome by the expression on the child’s face. She was beaming at Nalley, causing her to realize the impact a teacher has on lives.
Mr. Middleton was a dynamic teacher whose confidence in students inspired her to learn.
And Sean, with multiple disabilities including a severe emotional disability, is in a self-contained special education class. But he is learning to speak, read and write Spanish and frequently does better than children not in special ed.
Most every one of us can name a teacher or two who inspired us, who helped make us the people we eventually became.
Mine was Mrs. B – Beverly Berzinski – an English teacher at Glenbrook South High School in Glenview, Ill. I wasn’t a bad student but not the most motivated one either in a high-achieving school, but Mrs. B. saw something in me I didn’t see in myself. She believed I could be a journalist.
She believed so much she took a story I wrote for class to the local newspaper – the Glenview Announcements – and they accepted it. It was my first byline. I was 16.
And another English teacher Judy Means encouraged me in creative writing – a dream that all but died out until last year when I went back to school to get an MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in fiction at Converse College.
I think, too, about the teachers who encouraged my three children – at Bethel Elementary and Hillcrest Middle, J.L. Mann and the Fine Arts Center. The journey continues with my little grandson Reid starting this week at Sterling School.
Teaching, it seems to me, has to be one of the most frustrating, heartbreaking, joyous, uplifting of all jobs. Imagine being able to touch so many lives. To help children find their way. Their way. Not the way of the parents who come into this thing called parenthood with certain preconceived notions – some more than others – about what this child will become.
The teacher greets the child where he is. And lifts from there.
I’m not trying to paint an unrealistic picture that every teacher is exceptional. I could name a few right off who didn’t do much for me or my children.
But for those who did, wouldn’t it be great to sit down tonight and write a note to say thanks? Perhaps Facebook could be good for something.
