[This week I zinged students/teachers as the school-year closes. Here are
some thoughts on teachers that are worth looking at again.]
Newspaper correction: “It was incorrectly reported last Friday that today is
T-shirt Appreciation Week. It is actually Teacher Appreciation Week.”
~~
During the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, James Michener (author of
“Hawaii,” “The Source” and other mega-sellers), was invited to a celebrity
dinner at the White House. In a letter Michener declined to attend: “Dear
Mr. President: I received your invitation three days after I had agreed to
speak a few words at a dinner honoring the wonderful high school teacher who
taught me how to write. I know you will not miss me at your dinner, but she
might at hers.”
A week later, Michener received a handwritten reply from the understanding
Ike: “In his lifetime a man lives under 15 or 16 presidents, but a really
fine teacher comes into his life but rarely. Go and speak at your teacher’s
dinner.”
~~
I believe that an apple lasts a short time in the hands of a teacher, but a
bit of wisdom lasts a lifetime in the mind and heart of a student.
I believe that when you speak, your words echo across the room, but when you
teach, your words echo across the ages.
I believe, as Henry Adams, the grandson and great-grandson of presidents,
put it: “A teacher affects eternity. No one can tell where his influence
stops.”
I believe that teachers deserve the nice things people say about them.
~~
Cynically, the playwright George Bernard Shaw said, “He who can, does. He
who cannot, teaches.”
But Lee Iacocca’s response fits better: “In a truly rational world, the best
of us would be teachers, and the rest of us would do something else.”
~~
Dr Bob Griffin
[email protected] www.grif.net
“Jesus Knows Me, This I Love!”