I am sure most of you have heard this story at one time or another. We include our version of this humorous anecdote in our director's notebook each year:
The Director knocked on the pearly gates,
Her face grim and old.
She stood before the man of fate,
for admission to the fold.
"What have you done." St Peter said,
"to gain admission here?"
"I've been a dance director," she said
"for many and many a year."
The pearly gates swung open wide!
St. Peter rang the bell!
"Come in and choose your harp my friend,
you've had your share of hell!"
Indeed, your job has its share of ups and downs. And many are the downs. In fact, I am sure that you wonder sometimes, if all the downs are worth the seemingly too few ups. May I assure you, they are in fact worth it! Many young people arise to the challenges offered under your tutelage and go on to become successful additions to society.
At last year's annual convention, DTDA honored Barbara Tidwell. A woman who did more than just touch the lives of young people. This woman lived by example and led a generation of young women to reach for their dreams. She taught them to strive for excellence while maintaining the fine attributes of a true lady. All of this, she taught them as their drill team director. As we sat in the banquet hall, I was astonished at the number of women in the audience who had been inspired by her and her teachings.
Unfortunately, few directors ever receive such wonderful accolades. Each and every day, you impact the lives of the children you teach. And many of these little touches go unnoticed. It's not always so glamorous. Some days are plagued with frustrations and failures. It seems like everything you do is destined for complaint and criticism.
How many times have you been criticized for cutting someone from a routine? Your goal is to make the team better and to offer incentive for improvement. The parents don't always see it this way.
How many lectures can you give on being the best you can be? Your goal is to teach the students to strive for greatness so that they can feel accomplished and excel. They don't seem to want it that bad.
How many times have been criticized for working the girls too hard? Your goal of course is to better their performance and their discipline. The girls don't seem to agree.
Sometimes, as with all people, we lose our way. Our frustration overtakes us and we simply shutdown. It's hard to know which direction to turn when "the hits just keep coming."
When traveling in unfamiliar territory, explorers frequently consult their compasses to ensure they have not lost their way or are not heading in a direction away from their direction. The value of a compass is that it defines one direction-North. All other directions can be determined and selected or rejected based on this knowledge.
As educators, we also need to consult our professional compass. Rather than showing North, of course, our compass must point directly at the growth and development of young people. Every issue, every decision, every expenditure of our resources-financial or human-must be judged on its consistency with the point of our "compass." If we are clear and consistent in our pursuit of and support of student growth and development, we can monitor our direction and adjust our course accordingly. As teachers, our "compass" cannot be carried in our pockets, however. We must carry it in our hearts.
Many times we just don't know if what we are doing is really making an impact. This can be frustrating. However, as teachers, we must learn to consult our professional compass and adjust. Whatever it is we are doing, we should be doing for the growth and development of the student.
When frustrating situations arise, once again, you must consult your "compass." See these situations as a challenge. Rise to the challenge. Meet it head on. Take a proactive position and conquer the situation or problem. Make something good out of it...for the students.
With children, these challenges are always the highest test of our patience and professional abilities. However, they must be handled with the same focus. Time after time. Issue after issue. Determine that you will touch the life of every child everyday.
When the students themselves become frustrating, consult your "compass." Always adjusting for their growth and development. Consistency is the key. In fact, it is this consistency that will teach your young ones discipline. They will know where you stand and what you expect. And what a wonderful attribute this discipline will instill in them for the rest of their lives.
It is said that behind every great man, there stands a great woman. It is equally true that behind every great person there has stood a great teacher. In all great leaders, politicians, businessmen, there has been a teacher that lit the flame of success in their young minds and hearts. Rusty Berkus said, "There comes that mysterious meeting in life when someone acknowledges who we are and what we can be, igniting the circuits of our highest potential."
And so it is with the story of Stephen Glenn. A dyslexic student who at an early age displayed an amazing sight vocabulary that made his parents quite optimistic about his ability to learn. To his horror, in the first grade, he discovered that letters were more important than words. Dyslexic students see letters upside down and backwards and don't even arrange them in the same order. His first grade teacher branded him learning-disabled.
She wrote down her observations and passed them on to his second-grade teacher so that she could develop an appropriate bias against him before he arrived. He entered the second-grade able to see the answers to math problems, but having no idea what the busy work was to reach them. He discovered that the busy work was more important than the answer. Now, he was totally intimidated by the learning process and developed a stutter.
Being unable to speak up assertively, being unable to perform basic math functions and arranging letters inappropriately, he was a complete social failure. Fear and shame assisted the young Mr. Glenn in developing a strategy of moving to the back of each classroom out of sight and out of mind. When called on, he would simply stutter aimlessly and force the teacher to move on in the interest of time. Most of his teachers obliged his tactics and his fate was sealed.
My third grade teacher knew before I arrived that I couldn't speak, write, read or do mathematics, so she had no real optimism toward dealing with me. I discovered malingering as a basic tool to get through school. This allowed me to spend more time with the school nurse than the teacher or find vague reasons to stay home or be sent home. That was my strategy in the third and fourth grades.
Just as I was about to die intellectually, I entered the fifth grade and God placed me under the tutelage of the awesome Mrs. Hardy, known in the western United States as one of the formidable elementary school teachers ever to walk the Rocky Mountains. This incredible woman, whose six-foot frame towered above me, put her arms around me and said, "He's not learning disabled, he's eccentric."
Now, people view the potential of an eccentric child far more optimistically than a plain old disabled one. But she didn't leave it there. Mrs. Hardy told me, "I've talked to your mother and she says when she reads to you, you remember it almost photographically. You just don't do it well when you're asked to assemble all of the words and pieces. And reading out loud appears to be a problem, so when I'm going to call on you to read in my class, I'll let you know and you can go home and memorize it the night before, then we'll fake it in front of the other kids. Also, your mom says when you look something over, you can talk about it with great understanding, but when she asks you to read it work for word and even write something about it, you appear to get hung up in the letters and stuff and lose the meaning. So, when the other kids are asked to read and write those worksheets I give them, you can go home and under less pressure on your own time do them and bring them back to me the next day."
She also said, "I noticed you appear to be hesitant and fearful to express you thoughts and I believe that any idea a person has is worth considering. I've looked into this and I'm not sure it will work, but it helped a man named Desmosthenes - and it can help you. Can you say Desmosthenes?"
"D-d-d-d."
She said, "Well, you will be able to. He had an unruly tongue, so he put stones in his mouth and practiced until he got control of it. So I've got a couple of marbles, too big for you to swallow, that I've washed off. From now on when I call on you, I'd like you to put them in you mouth and stand up and speak up until I can hear and understand you." And, of course, supported by her manifest belief in and understanding of me, I took the risk, tamed my tongue, and was able to speak.
The next year, I went on to the sixth grade and to my delight, so did Miss Hardy, So I had the opportunity to spend two full years under her tutelage.
I kept track of Miss Hardy over the years and learned a few years ago that she was terminally ill with cancer. Knowing how lonely she would be, with her only SPECIAL student over 1,000 miles away, I naively bought a plane ticket and went to keep her company. I arrived to find that I had come to stand in line, at least figuratively, behind several hundred other of her SPECIAL students. People just like me, who also kept track of her and had made a pilgrimage to renew their association and share their affection for her in the latter period of her life. The group was a very interesting mix of people - 3 U.S. Senators, 12 state legislators and a number of Presidents, Vice Presidents, CEOs and owners of major corporations and businesses across the United States and indeed the world!
The interesting thing, in comparing notes, is that three-fourths of these people went into the fifth grade quite intimidated by the educational process, believing they were incapable, insignificant and at the mercy of fate or luck. They emerged from their contact with Miss Hardy believing they were capable, significant, influential people who had the capacity to make a difference in life if they would only try.
So you see, your job is the most important job in the world. You have the privilege of igniting the sparks that could produce the next great business leader, the next corporate president, vice president or CEO. The next world-class athlete, the next gold medal Olympian. The next Senator, Legislator, Judge or maybe even the next President of the United States. What an honor you have and what a great responsibility. The rewards are many and they are all yours!
So the next time you face a situation, student, administrator or parent who just seems dead set on pushing you to the very limits of your own patience, take a deep breath, check your compass and remember: Fifty years from now it will not matter what kind of car you drove, what kink of house you lived in, how much you had in you bank account, or what you clothes looked like. But the world may be a little better because you were important to the life of a child.
