Gratitude and love.
These words were on my mind this week.
Some foundational information to provide a starting point
for this log is necessary. Our
university semester was interrupted harshly by the pandemic, and there was a
lot of emotional, mental, and academic stress involved with the changes that
interruption brought. For me personally,
those stresses were compounded by two other stressors: being a dad and being an encourager.
My kids were banished from their school about the same time
the rest of us were. This meant they
were home 24 hours each day, and aside from the basic tasks of making sure they
don’t hurt each other or jump off the top of the house on any given day, I also
had to be very sensitive to their emotional, mental, and academic
stresses. Doing school at home was not
easy on them at all. One child worked
ahead, completing every assignment seconds after they were emailed, and the
other child needed to be dragged through their assignments, often kicking and
screaming. Both were very upset to not
see their friends. Heck, we’re lucky
enough to have kids who love their school, and they were even missing their
teachers. A couple of weeks into our
educational banishment, G was furloughed from the hospital. This meant adding
another body and mind to the daily home mix.
It’s one thing to be busy at school during the week and go from 7:00 am
until 7:00 pm without talking to your wife or kids. It’s quite another thing to be busy with
school during the week but in the same building as your family, and not talk to
them. So, you try to do everything all
at once, and you can imagine how that normally turns out. On the best days everyone was a little on
edge. The worst days were, well,
worse.
It was easy to see how the switch to online learning was
impacting my students. I could see it on
their faces when they were kind enough to turn their cameras on during
Blackboard meetings. I could hear it in
their voices when they were kind enough to turn their microphones on instead of
typing. I could read it in their emails
and text messages. I had a need to try
to help make the transition and the anticlimactic ending to the semester as
enjoyable as possible. When it was time
for class, I closed my studio door and flipped the switch on my personality to
be the best version of myself. I posted
silly things to Instagram. I sent goofy
messages. I checked on people.
Each day I still carved out quiet time for myself. Some days I selfishly stayed in my studio
after a class had ended just so I could think about the next thing I had to
do. Some days I sat up late at night
petting Zeke with my brain in neutral.
Every day I ran and tried to have my coffee in silence, but I quickly
learned that the things that were bothering everyone else were also bothering
me. People online were talking about
being bored and binge-watching all sorts of things, and I was over here wishing
I had several more hours in each day to get all this crap done. I was tired.
I was withdrawing from my mental account faster than I was
depositing.
But then, some messages arrived. The first message came through social media
and caught me totally off guard. It was
a simple message of gratitude from a student.
Sometimes at the end of a semester a student will be thoughtful enough
to email a kind word about enjoying a class or something like that. Those messages are always appreciated, and
they carry much more weight than you can imagine. There were a couple of those this semester
but this one was not from a student in one of my spring classes. It was just a student who noted something and
voiced an appreciation for it. The next
one came just a few days later. One
sentence that probably completely changed how I feel about the entire semester
as a teacher. Gratitude is so
powerful. Gratitude is an expression of
love.
I don’t have to teach the way I teach. The basic task of transferring information
from one human to another can certainly be done with less effort. I teach the way I do because I love my
students. I see them as humans instead
of numbers. I can help them get a
degree, but I have a deeper desire to help them become better humans; to be
kinder, happier, more fulfilled. I know
this may be idealistic and maybe you think it’s a waste of effort, but I’m
stubborn so shut up. So, I do what I do,
the way I do it. There is, of course, a
cost. I give up time with my family and
friends to invest in my students. I sometimes
take a lot of crap from people who think I should teach a different way. Some days it’s just hard because life is
hard, so I do the best I can. And then
you get an email of gratitude and you know it was worth the price. Just one sentence makes the sacrifice
worthwhile. All the sunflower seeds I plant
each year do not germinate. But the ones
that do certainly make the planting worthwhile.
Saying “thank you” or
saying, “I appreciate you” is just another way of saying “I love you”. I know my students would run screaming if
they thought of it this way. Most of
them would pass out if they even knew I believed in love. But behind the curtain of sarcasm,
self-deprecation, and nonsense, love is the common thread in this story. I teach because I love my students. Some students offer that love back to me
through gratitude, and it keeps cycling through over and over.
The coolest thing is that you just never know how important
it is until you do it. I’ve had students
tell me years after graduation that I said something to them once that changed
their life. Honestly, I was probably
clueless. I was just doing my thing the
way I do it and they happened to be there.
I had no idea it would have such an impact on them. Likewise, a student may decide
mid-conversation that they want to say thanks or maybe they’re bored and decide
to email. They may have no idea just how close I was to throwing in the
towel. Some of those messages have saved
me.
I wonder how many lives could be made better today if you
and I decided to look outside ourselves for a moment and let someone know we
see them and appreciate them?
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