Who was your most influential teacher? – QOTD

I think of her daily with heartfelt memories. Yet some will argue as a teacher she had a duty, but a duty to do what she did went above that of the classroom. And those lessons still live within me.

I was born to an unwed mother in the 1960’s. An era that also seen grandparents take in the child for the mother’s benefit. After all, being a single mother back then was frowned upon by society. I was that proverbial child.

My grandparents were great. Through them and my eleven aunts, uncles and their spouses that hovered over me from one time or another protecting me from my mother’s own insecurities and often hatred when she was around, I led a good life as a child.

The day is as clear to me as if it had happened yesterday. I woke, dressed, ate and headed off for class. Midway through the day I was sent to the principal’s office where I discovered my Aunt Virginia was waiting. I was whisked into her and Uncle Ed’s, her husband. car and driven home. Once there my Aunt Donna took me into the bathroom and told me that my grandfather had passed.

I remember being numb. But I didn’t cry. As I look back to that then 7-year-olds mindset, I see myself like my grandfather would have been. Strong, sturdy with an understanding everyone has life limits and his had expired. He loved and supported his family after saying ‘I Do‘ to my grandmother decades earlier. They were the love of one another’s lives.

The funeral came and went as did the mourning, and not long after it was time to return to school.

Mrs. Anderson was my third-grade teacher. She was pretty in beauty through my eyes as a child but was tough as a teacher. She took no shit from the kids in her class, I can say laughingly now as an adult. However, her students simply feared her because in her eyes we were there for one reason, to learn and her duty was to teach. Period. End of discussion.

I sat in my assigned seat, while returning that day, long before the school bell rang. After the rest of the class had shuffled in from the hallway and took their rightful spots in the room she rose from behind her desk and called my name while pointing me toward the classroom’s door.

I recall shivering as I exited the room with her following behind. Once in the hallway, and the room door shut behind us, she embraced me in the most loving hug I had ever received. Whispering in my ear she said, it’ll be alright. After what felt like eternity to a seven-year-old, we went back into the room.

Behind her tough exterior, with not even a smile for our class photo, she taught me something much greater than math, history or English that day and it’s lived in my soul ever since. She taught me of love and empathy, two traits that have since defined my life to this day. So, tell me, ‘Who was your most influential teacher? And why?‘

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