Griggsville Teachers

2009 “I think they believed that”

His name was Matt… this tall… baritone.

A special welcome to all the teachers today. Perhaps the best thing about teaching is that one day never resembles another…even though we wish it would…never does. There are only two rules in dealing with young people: Nothing ever changes Everything always changes.

When Mrs. Walker greeted us at Perry Grade School in 1954, there were about 20 of us. All lived in two-parent homes. None had seen divorce in their family. Our only big worry was that Nikita Khrushchev would blow us up, but Mrs. Walker showed us how to get under our desks to avoid a nuclear holocaust. We lined up outside the first grade classroom to soak our teeth in stanis-flouride but we spit quickly when we were told that it was the communists who were putting the fluoride in the water. We drank milk with none of the fat removed, we were served meat cooked in lard, our fried chicken still had necks and wishbones, and the words Diet and Pepsi didn’t ever go together. We learned science by planting a bean in a paper cup, watering it once a day, and waiting for it to come up. Mine was the only bean that didn’t. I don’t understand. Every day when Mrs. Walker left the room I’d dig it up and check to see how it was doing. I don’t know for sure, but I think my friend Gary Hannant peed on my bean at noon hour. But what is the only event that I remember vividly from first grade? Cheating on spelling. Mrs. Walker forgave me and told me not to do it again.

The kids in today’s classrooms no longer have to worry about Khrushchev, but statistically only one-third of them now live with their two natural parents, and an increasingly number live in one-parent homes.

I was the odd ball in my class. My mother worked (about thirty feet from me). The only working mother in the class. Someone was always home when we got home from school. Such is not the case today.

Although the math you teach may be taught a bit differently, the principles are still the same. Despite text messaging, English grammar has not changed. In spite of global warming, the shape of the earth has not changed. The Leaning Tower of Pisa has not tipped over and despite what my grandma told me, you still won’t blow up if you put three pieces of Double-Bubble in your mouth at the same time. Some of our subject matter has changed and our methods have changed… but the most important single thing we can teach has never changed….

How to care for each other… How to live peacefully with each other… How to forgive… How to love one another. Simply how to love one another.

Sorry, but if you are a teacher, your students are learning more about how adults should act than the multiplication tables and the names of the state capitals. Your schools test scores will not reflect the most important thing you teach…but your students lives will. ---I don’t remember much of what Gwen Woods taught me about Latin, but I remember that she said that we should never let coming from a town as small as Perry hold us back. ---I don’t remember anything Fred Witham taught me about world history, but I remember that he took the starters out in basketball as soon as we were safely ahead. He said, “Those other kids have feelings, too.”

Our nation is currently aflame because of the health care debate. Why? Because we disagree on the need for good health care? Because we don’t like people who are poor? Because we don’t have the resources to give everyone good care? No…We are carrying guns to rallies and biting each other’s fingers off, and screaming at each other in meetings because we haven’t learned how to understand one another. We haven’t learned compassion. We haven’t learned how to love one another.

There are an increasing number of kids growing up in households where it’s very difficult to learn how to forgive…how to understand..how to listen..how to love.

I guess it’s possible to be a great teacher without knowing Christ, but I would find it very difficult.

Little children, let us not love [merely] in theory or in speech but in deed and in truth (in practice and in sincerity). HYPERLINK "http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?search=1%20John%203:%2018;&version=45;" \t "_blank" 1 John 3: 18 In other other words, Let us show our love by what we do…how we act.

Whether you have a teacher’s degree or not, you are a teacher. Piano lessons… Edna Mae Brown.. Mildred Smith. Trumpet at I.C…..Jimmy Zimmerman.

Yes, we teach history and math and language and P.E., but most of all we are teaching them how to become adults. We are teaching them how to love. In many cases we just secondary partners with the parents, but in an increasing number of instances, we are it…. We are the sole responsible adults in their lives.

And Christ…is our greatest example in how to do that.

And sometimes…sometimes they teach us. Dylan...interrupted meeting with superintendent.

If you are alive, then someone is watching you. If you are alive, you are a teacher. And the most valuable lesson that you can teach anyone is how to love. How to show appreciation. How to put the needs of others above your own. As role good role models become less and less prevalent in many homes, the importance of the teacher as a responsible adult becomes more and more vital.

Bob Slavens… tough love.

Once a year my college fraternity meets for supper…about 11 of us. One undertaker, one insurance salesman, a state worker, the owner of a construction company, one banker, a newspaper editor, a lawyer, a professional photographer, a superintendent of schools, and a research chemist. I’m the only teacher… and making the lowest salary of anyone at the table. And from listening to them over the years, none experience the joy I do in my job. Wouldn’t trade their salaries for Matt’s baritone any day.

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