End of school brings respect for teachers

Last Thursday was a small milestone 16 years in the making. I drove my youngest child, Colton, to school at Taylor Ray Elementary in Rosenberg.

It was the last day since my oldest child entered school in 1998 that I will have a youngster in elementary school. That’s a lot of parent-teacher meetings, Christmas programs, fundraisers, field trips and report cards.

I’m proud to say that all four of my children have done far better in school than I ever did. This is especially true for Colton, who is a straight-A student in the Gifted and Talented program and a member of student council and the safety patrol. He gets more “A”s on a single report card than I got on all of my elementary school report cards combined – and back then we went through the sixth grade, so I had an extra year on him.

As a youngster I really hated school. As an adult 31 years removed from high school, I really hate that I didn’t engage more in my studies. I love learning. I enjoy life’s lessons and immersing myself in topics of interest.

As I look back over the years, I can see what a huge difference teachers made in my life. I can see which ones were just collecting a paycheck and which ones were really devoted to their calling. Do not be mistaken – teaching is a calling and a noble one at that.

If I had to pick one single teacher who had the most profound impact on my life, I doubt I could limit it to just one. If I had to name one, it would be Randy Montgomery, my science teacher at Faith Baptist School. Not only did he teach me how to learn, he made learning fun and the subject fascinating.

My sixth grade teacher, Robert Easterday, was fun and passionate and helped his students discover their creative side. I learned from him that the only limits we have in life are the ones we place on ourselves. Unfortunately it took a couple decades for that lesson to sink in.

While many teachers encouraged reading, none was better than my fifth grade teacher, Pat Weaver. She could read stories and tell tales that lit the imagination like moonlight on a mountain lake. In high school, Lois Anderson inspired a bored typing student to become an award-winning student newspaper photographer and professional journalist.

My college advisor, Richard Joyce, managed to get the fundamentals of the profession drilled into the sleepy, near comatose head of mine. I think he had the most difficult job of all my teachers, but whatever he did worked.

With the end of school and graduation now behind us, I’m reminded of the significant role teachers play in society. Though I’ve teased them about it, I’ve never begrudged them for having summers off and long Christmas breaks.

Not everything works on a 9 to 5 schedule and to be sure the most influential and important work ever done in the world didn’t happen on a punch clock job.

While this marks the end of a long era of elementary schools for my family, it is far from the end of education. If all goes well this fall, half my family will be in college and my two youngest in the junior high/middle school years. That leaves just little ole me learning from the laboratory of life and wondering why I didn’t become a teacher. I could use a nice summer break.