There are times when I wish everyone could have seen and heard what I heard. Tonight was one of those nights. It was a class filled with teachers working on their Masters degrees. Our discussion about how to help middle school children dream big dreams led several of my students to share their personal dreams. If you are discouraged about world conditions, if you wonder about the quality of education our children are receiving, if you think you just cannot bear to hear any more bad news you should have been with me.
Your heart would have thrilled and your courage bolstered by these public school teachers sharing their stories. They were people who left lucrative careers to go back to school. One man has gone to night school for over nine years so he could become a teacher. Others were moms whose children are not small any more and so these moms are back in school to become teachers. Others are already teachers trying to be even better at their craft. All of them were people we would be proud to have stand before our children.
Sometimes we only hear about the bad things that happen in our schools and we miss out on the literally tens of thousands of decent, moral, hardworking, good people who sacrifice major amounts of money so they can change the future of the world child by child. I just wanted you to know for every lousy teacher that might be hiding in the system there are hundreds of great ones who love and care for our children every single day.
Written by Roger Bothwell on October 29, 2003.
Spring of Life, 901 Signorelli Circle, St. Helena, CA 94574