Introduction

Why do I teach? Is teaching worth it? These are questions I often ask myself.

Teaching isn’t an efficient way to get rich. And I must admit, long ago when I was a young student myself, I did not always show teachers the most respect. But now my thoughts have changed. If I could do it all over again, I would have shown each of my teachers the utmost honor every day.

They deserved my honor because it was certain teachers, at key moments in my life, which shaped the trajectory of my future in a vast multitude of ways.

And as I get older, I find myself enjoying life more and more. Why am I so happy? I am happy today because of the tools of thought, that long ago, were given me by teachers.

Main

My 4th grade teacher was Miss Adams. My first impression on the first day of school was that she was quite mean. I was afraid of her. She was so very strict about every little thing.

From the start we had to get her name right. She was “Miss” Adams. That means she was not married. A married woman should be called Mrs. (Missus). A widowed or divorced woman was Ms. (Mizz). But she was not married and we could not be casual. We had to be respectful and mannerly young people and that meant always-addressing adults properly. So she was Miss Adams and we’d better not mess that up.

How about calling our teacher by her first name? Don’t even think about it. We learned all this on the first day of school in the 4th grade.

She delivered this lesson on etiquette and all her other lessons with vigor and vitality and verve. As a result of her passion, I have never forgotten it. I always knew what to call adults. I always knew how to show respect. I never made a mistake. Because of this, people would say of me, “one day young Mr. Smith will be a nice gentleman when he grows up.”

It is nice to have nice people say nice things about you.

That’s what a good teacher can give to you.

Miss Adams was tall and thin and blonde; there was never a question of who was in charge in the classroom - it was she. It was feminism for real. If I were to show you the picture of my 4th grade class you would see her, blond and beautiful, looking like a movie star straight from a 1950’s Hollywood movie.

A classic golden-haired girl, but she was no pushover. Miss Adams established her authority on the first day and she never gave us a break. Her classroom was orderly. We had to line up to go from place to place. There was no pushing in the line, no jumping of the queue – good manners were most paramount.

After the first few weeks of school, we children were terrified of our teacher. When she spoke, we were silent. What she said, we wrote down. We became a disciplined group of kids.

Then, and then only then, did she reveal her true plan for her us…

One day she came to school with a book called A Taste of Blackberries. She stood in the front of the class and just started reading it. That became our routine. The teacher reads, the students listen, they process, they discuss, they think.

We couldn’t sleep, or daydream, or check our cellphones - there were no cell phones back then, but if there were, we wouldn’t have been looking at them in Miss Adams’s class.

No distractions were allowed. No playing around during reading time. You had to listen. There was simply no choice in the matter. And so, more than 30 years ago, in her class, totally against my will and without my consent, something inside of me sparked, and that was the very moment which ignited in me a lifelong love for reading.

Miss Adams read to us all the time. No videos. No PPTs. Just a single teacher with a single book and 30 students.

One day she passed out pamphlet from a publishing company. It was a list of books you could order and they would come in the mail (needless to say there was no Amazon.com back then).

I looked at every single title. I chose more than 20 books. The Red Tape Gang. The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew mysteries. The boy from the UFO, and more.

I took the list home to my Mom. Books were expensive even back then. I was hoping Mom would buy at least one or two. What happened was a shock. My Mom bought every single book on my list.

That’s what good Moms do.

The books were delivered a week or two later. They made a big stack on my desk. My desk looked like a Chinese high-school students’ desk a few weeks before the Gaokao. My desk was stacked sky-high with books. I took them home and read them all in just a few weeks.

Miss Adams kept reading and I kept buying more books. It was a true cycle of virtue. I’ve had the reading habit since then. I now have a library at home of more than 500 books on every topic you can imagine. I’ve traveled the world and I've purchased books in every country I visited. My collection of books is my personal treasure. I love going home to be with my books. They have trained my brain and guided my life.

Conclusion

My love for words was sparked in the 4th grade and it has never left me. My love for words is one of my favorite parts about me. “The artful arrangement of words” is what the Chinese-American writer Amy Tan calls it – the joy of words, yes this is my hobby. And this is what makes being a teacher a meaningful life for me now. I live in a world shaped by knowledge and the letters that carry that knowledge. Being a man of letters makes me like myself. So without reading, I’d be nothing.

I wonder if Miss Adams had any idea the impact she had on one child’s life. I hope she did.

Now I’m a teacher myself and I sometimes I find myself being strict. I feel bad every time I give a student a disappointing grade. I’m sad to see them sad.

But then I remember, why I remember, a teacher named Miss Adams, from way back in the 4th grade. It was more than 30 years ago, on sunny September days in Northeast Ohio, but I remember those days like it was yesterday.

She was proper and traditional. She was old-fashioned. She took her job very seriously. She cared about us. Miss Adams was a gift.

I would like to pay her back.

And that’s the first reason I’m a teacher. To pay back what I owe the world. Now it’s my turn to contribute, so I show up to give, not to get.

By the way, my little sister joined Miss Adam’s class four years after I did. But my sister didn’t know her as “Miss Adams.” She’d gotten married by then and had become “Mrs. Maxim.” So my sister came home and told me stories about the strict Mrs. Maxim and how no one was allowed to confuse the difference between Miss and Mrs. and Ms. She told me how this teacher was strict and made them study and made them pay attention to every lesson.

And then one day, my sister came home with a big stack of books…

The virtuous cycle had started again. My sister has never stopped reading.

That’s what a good teacher can do for you.

That's why I teach. That's why it's worth it.

“We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is…serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage.” Romans