Tribute to teachers, and their tributaries – this is for you!

Go all the way back, as far as you can, to the first teacher you can remember, then, try to remember each subsequent one after that. Include elementary, middle, high school, college, post grad, vocational. Include the minor ones; only one subject, or semester, assistants, or only one presentation at a professional seminar. Include all of them; the driver’s ed, the exercise classes, the cooking, the music, the art, the meditation, the bee keeping… can you? I doubt it. Especially if you’re curious enough to want to know more, or humble enough to know you don’t know enough, because you’re the ones that can’t stop learning, for whom learning is like eating – a necessary function. And maybe, you might also be inclined to show, impart, share, enlighten – to, well, teach.

Fifty years of teaching is quite a stretch, I wonder if my teacher, François, knew he’d be teaching Yoga for fifty years, when he started in 1975, age twenty two? I joined him at the celebration he held at Open Sky Yoga in Rochester recently, still that evening, he taught. He can’t not. He can’t not see what could or should be better, where pliability into inquisitiveness would be as or more prudent as pliability of muscles. When going deeper into the exploration (maybe not deeper into the poses), though more demanding, is where the transformative information is. He can’t not share his gold mine of nuggets, his observations, input, and yes, even criticism (which is actually a necessary function of a true teacher – the ability to functionally criticize!)

As my son just closed ninth grade, his first year of public education, we’ve chatted quite a bit about his teachers. In both private and public school, he’s been blessed with teachers gifted with angel wings tucked behind their unextraordinary button down shirts and other more odious individuals potentially more driven by subconscious self-aggrandizing motives than the nurturing of sprouting minds, though, even they offer kindling for a certain kind of fire potentially useful to spark transformation. There aren’t enough words in the thesaurus for my gratitude for his teachers. Nor can I enumerate the litany of relevant, no, indispensable, teachers of my own, including the nearly degrading, and especially the encouraging and enlightening, most especially if they were funny! Which teachers have been the most pivotal for your refinement and evolution?

Us humans, so reliant on learning to survive, require to be instilled with edification from someone, unless we grow into a knowing through organic experience or, as many a great sage or shaman has, cognize information though ritual and meditation. (But really, who trusts divine organic cognition anymore? The western mind wants proof, because as Paul Simon says, "proof is the bottom line for everyone". And experience? Sure, great, if we can get out from behind the three layers of screens we’re now rearing our babes behind, and put them into the real world of sensory exchange hosted by mother nature with a guest list of everyone around plus manage to not erase instinct, intuition and the confidence to trust experience. However, since those muscles are unrecognizably atrophied in the body of modern society, we’re left with the last eternal mode of learning – being taught by someone who knows (ish. Knows-ish because knowledge is a moving target it seems. If you don’ t believe me, you haven’t learned anything new lately!)) So the burden to teach falls almost solely upon the educator, no pressure... but, it’s mostly on you, dear teachers, nowadays.

Almost any true teacher will attest, being a teacher is almost non-optional – it’s in your blood, it’s your Dharma – life purpose. True teachers are nearly incapable of not campaigning for the uptake of what they prophesize. To a true teacher, imparting is on par with wearing clothes – it’s not necessary, but not doing so would feel absurdly awkward in most places. While methodology varies, the gift to seed the soil of intelligence is the common theme.

Not all teachers are hired to stand in front of a group who are assigned with the task of learning. Some wear disguises. Here’s a few signs you’re in the presence of a teacher at heart: Whatever they are doing gives them access to people who will need or want to learn something. Take the person at the cheese counter of Wegman’s recently who handed me about eight samples, with a full bio of each cheese, including stand out ingredients, place and timing of production, great occasions to serve them at and what types of things to pair them with plus asked me questions which would inspire her next sample. Another tell tale trait is that afore mentioned appetite for learning and general curiosity, even when the learning matures to their own inner learning rather than primarily an out side source. You know you’re in the presence of a teacher when the person can’t help but to offer up insights to alleviate a person’s struggles, or provide a hidden benefit, or a cautionary tale, or simply to inform because their passion and point of view is hard for a teacher to detangle from. Even tradition and ritual are, in fact, best passed along by people with an inner teacher, though sometimes we call that person Mom, Auntie, friend.

For children, teachers are the sculptors of society, for better or worse shaping minds, and hopefully helping the youth to distinguish between healthy proclivities and harmful tendencies, shaving away the latter to illuminate the former. Maybe doctors are charged with treating injury and illness, but teachers are who have the power to teach how to prevent injury or illness. If I ruled the world, it would be teachers who’d be the most highly esteemed of professions. During early education and elementary school, a kid might spend more time with a single teacher than their parents! Maybe they deserve more than a mug that says 'A+ teacher' or a $20 Starbucks gift card (even though they probably are exhausted from spending all day with squirming children and probably do need that extra cup of coffee!) Maybe its teachers who should be at the pinnacle of our respect.

With the academic school year just ended, and the marking of my yoga teacher’s 50th teaching anniversary, I’m feeling a surge of appreciation for teachers. And, as someone who is also a teacher, I can attest, the student is as important as the subject or the teacher (a student-less teacher isn’t a teacher – but an anchor-less boat adrift on a sea of knowledge.) I hope I've been half the student that my teachers have been as teachers, and, I hope I've shared the essences of what I've learned effectively! So take these words from my heart as a bowing of my head to teachers – to my great teachers, of which I’ve had many, to my son’s teachers, to my friends and family who teach, and to all who really can’t help it, they are here to teach - Thank you~