Best Teacher of the Century Award: Your Mom and Dad

First, remember back to when you were but a wee one, maybe four or five years old. Or better yet, take a look at your four or five year old. What do you see? A copy machine, right? As you drive in the car, walk through the park, go on excursions and adventures here and there you see and hear the familiar. You hear your child making statements and after a fashion you remember those words and phrases as your own, even the one's you'd like to not own up to. Even the facial expressions and mannerisms come back at your full force and familiar.

Going with our original example, now flash forward a couple decades or more, what do you see? Around the age of thirty, maybe thirty-five your words and phrases, and mannerisms become familiar, and for good reason. Why it takes so long for us to realize (are these things time released?) that who we are hearing and seeing is our parents I don't know. It is our mom or dad or both. We may hear them when we get mad at our kids, run into frustration at work, or even in the joy we express; it is our parents coming alive in our own words and actions.

Now let's get to the issue at hand: best teacher ever, greatest influence in our lives.

Well, of all the dozens of teachers I've had through elementary, high school, college, into grad school, who do I remember? Who stands out in my mind? Some teacher I think of now and again as I learn and move forward in life? No, not one of them. But there is one teacher who never taught in the formal school environment who comes back to me time and again through the good the bad and the ugly forever instructing, our student / teacher relationship the most intimate and profound I've had by far.

It is funny to me all the praise and great value we place on school teachers, as if their influence and words will be remembered through the years. It is like a great conqueror who desires to be remembered through the ages when he is lucky if people give him a few thoughts a few times a year for all his bloodshed and efforts. Greatness is fleeting if it is sought after without focus on the giving not the taking. And the best school teacher is one who works in the shadows to the betterment of the student.


But my teacher is one I remember, my father, for he was with me always. Little did he leave my mind when I was younger, and little does he leave my mind now as I achieve, as I come to understand it was the curiosity and imagination he instilled in me; the discipline he forged; the tenacity laid in foundation; the honor and honesty that keep me at my best; responsibility and sticking to the task at hand, all that he taught me, my greatest, my only teacher, that has enabled me to succeed at work, in public, at home. For what school teacher is close enough to teach the essentials, the critical lessons of life, love, and home to make the better man the best-of-all men?


My father taught me those things no teacher can, things of the heart that are not, unfortunately, fiscally in demand but oh so much more important.


As the years go by, school teachers we've had over the years will fade in our minds, few if any ever coming to the forefront again. So if you want your child to succeed, if you want the best education your child can have to come to light, teach him all that you know and everything will turn out alright in your imperfect educational role, a parental delight.


"It is the responsibility of every adult to make sure that children hear what we have learned from the lessons of life and to hear over and over that we love them." ~~ Marian W. Edelman

If we desire our children to get the best education, then we must desire the best from us and to pass it on, to encourage and instill in the child a solid sense of self, character, responsibility, work ethic, honesty, honor, accountability, tenacity, discipline, focus and all that goes along with success, for if we don't prepare the vessel and prepare it adequately regardless of what we put in it, that which is so secondary, it will not matter. For the vessel will spill over all that it has taken in and never achieve regardless of all the knowledge, ability, skill, gifts and desire.

It is time for parents to take responsibility for teaching their children and teaching them well all that they need to know to prosper them to the end of their time.


Postscript:

Days after writing this story, I was at home in the evening watching a recorded segment of the morning CNN news with my favorite CNN anchor the smooth Tony Harris. He was interviewing Steve Harvey who was promoting his new book Act Like a Lady Think Like a Man.

The focus of Harvey's book is on relationships between black women and men. On this occasion, he was focusing on black men and how they need to prioritize their lives correctly: God, family, work. As a point of reference, he spoke of our president, Obama, a black man in the White House, president of the United State "The most prestigious position on earth" and that now black men had no excuse. Havey feels that it should not just be Obama's political achievement that should be emulated but his familial achievement most importantly, for Harvey spoke to the issue that behind every successful man should be a more successful family man.

It is to this point I speak at this time. Let me conclude in picture, that which replaces my few words with the many.