One of the English teachers who shaped who I am as a teacher died this past week. She had a long teaching career and a wide influence on many diverse student audiences. She was born in 1932.
One of the audience members I met this week after a speech open to the public at Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana, is a freshman in high school, visually impaired due to a sudden medical condition and determined to be a teacher. We talked together for quite some time. She wasn't even born until after the new century began.
These women stand beside me in my mind this contemplative afternoon: one journey finished and one just beginning. I stand as the single fixture of separation between them as I knew both of them but they did not know each other, but I also stand as the single fixture of synthesis between them. They are an embodiment of what I often say in motivational speeches, that we are made up of a patchwork of traits that we acquire from those who have touched our lives, then we give out pieces of our own patchwork to those whose lives we touch. I can easily picture a square of literary cloth that my old English teacher gave to me having some threads that wove their way into the patch of motivational cloth I passed on to my new freshman friend in Winona Lake this past week.
This week features the "Love Teaching Campaign."
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14mUIZI6RxUjImZ7ySlYKuTWeYVJatbm7LIJWhZULR-4/pub
Teachers will celebrate the honor, joy, dignity, and importance of this profession. For me, the two ladies who stand invisibly beside me as I finish this post illustrate why I love teaching. It is that patchwork, that receiving and giving, that magic that connects a woman born in 1932 to a visually impaired teenager who will likely never know the name of the woman born in 1932, yet they are bound together...because I, Kathy Nimmer, love teaching. The fibers educators use to bind the past, present, and future into a unified whole are responsible for the outcome of teachers loving teaching. That outcome is brilliant, intricate, lovely, imperfect, grand, noble, meaningful, difficult, rewarding, and eternal. Put simply, it is a masterpiece.