07 May A Way of Being with Others
I came across a Teacher Appreciation Week video made by current students at the high school I graduated from. One by one, students walk down the familiar hallway, smiling before they even reach the microphone, and give shout-outs to the teachers who have made a lasting difference in their lives.
I watched it waiting for someone to mention Mrs. Bailin, my favorite high school English teacher, whose classroom sat just to the right of where the students were filming. Of course, no one did. They wouldn’t. I graduated more than twenty-five years ago. She has long since retired.
But that’s the thing about teachers who matter. They stay with you. You do not have to search very hard to remember their names or the feeling of being in their classroom. Mrs. Bailin had the warmest, most genuine smile, and she took my writing seriously in a way that made me take it seriously too. She made students feel like they were worth her time and attention. Students would gather at her desk between classes and linger after school, finding reasons to stay a little longer.
When I help people learn motivational interviewing, I sometimes ask them to think of a teacher who made a positive difference in their life. The names come spilling out with smiles attached to them. Mr. Hansen. Mrs. Wright. Coach Miller. It is not only the memories themselves, but the way people say those names, as though opening a file they have carried for years containing some of the clearest evidence that they were seen, encouraged, and believed in.
People remember patience. Compassion. Encouragement. Hope. Acceptance. The feeling that someone noticed something good in them and reflected it back clearly enough that they began to believe it too.
That is the part we carry from one another. Not only the lessons themselves, but the way people related to us while we were becoming. The warmth. The attention. The sense that we were worth listening to and worth knowing. Long after people forget the details of what we taught them, they remember the way we made them feel in our presence. They remember who made them feel safe enough to grow.