Teachers - One of The Most Influential Forces on Earth

 Teachers - One of The Most Influential Forces on Earth

I ran into one of my junior high teachers a couple of days ago.  His name is Tom Carson.  He taught social studies and history.  He also coached the boy’s 8^th grade football and basketball teams.  As either teacher or coach, I spent at least part of nearly every school day with him for little more than 9 months but his influence on who I am and the man I’ve become is immeasurable.

How is it possible that someone with whom I’ve spent comparatively little time has such dramatic impact?  I think it has two primary components.  First, it is timing.  When you’re in 8^th grade, you’ve officially entered the fantasy realm of TeenagerLand.  Time seems to crawl.  9 months in Teenager-Land is like 7 years in Grown-Up-Land.  You’ve embarked on a hormone driven bender where every single aspect of your existence has life and death implications and everything seems to take forever.

Second, (and this was a common trait among many of the teachers I encountered in my home town) he gave a shit about me as a person – not just a kid that needs to memorize historic dates and the preamble to the Constitution in order to advance to 9^th grade.  Mr. Carson was invested in making sure I turned out okay as a good citizen - a good human being. 

In the fall of 1977, I had been voted 8^th grade class president, which was really more a popularity contest than a testament to my budding leadership skills.  This was the culmination of my ascension to being part of the “in” crowd.  Let’s just say I let all that go to my head.  I got pretty cocky.  I was influenced by my peers rather than being influential of my peers.  At one point, in an effort to win some laughs at the expense of someone else, I made some derogatory comments about another kid in class.  I don’t even know if he heard what I said but my friends and I were all chuckling about it and one of my teachers, Mrs. Dixon, overheard it.  She brought it to Mr. Carson’s attention and they took me aside that afternoon to have a talk with me.  They were the 8^th grade sponsors and kind of coordinated the activities of the class as a whole and the student elected leadership in particular.

In that talk Mr. Carson pointed out that not only was I being rude and disruptive in class – but that I was betraying a trust that others had placed with me as their class president.  They spoke about gifts of personality, intellect, and athletic skill and the responsibility that goes with those gifts.  They reminded me of the important role humility plays in our daily lives and leading by example.  They said they brought this to my attention because they cared about me and my future and wanted for me to succeed at whatever I set my mind to. 

Mortified doesn’t begin to describe how I felt after leaving that meeting.  I held my teachers in high esteem and to have disappointed them in this way was a devastating blow.  I took heed of their admonitions and advice.  I shared the experience with my mother and she agreed with what my teachers had said and done and also expressed her disappointment and hoped I had learned a valuable lesson.  Disappointment is far worse punishment than detention, being grounded, or even running laps.

When I saw Tom recently, he and I stood and talked for 20 minutes catching each other up on 30 years of life.  He is retired from public schools and he and his wife (who was an elementary school teacher herself) travel the country teaching teachers how to be better educators (mostly on Indian Reservations in the western U.S.).  Before we parted, I made sure to thank him for his care, compassion, influence, and life lessons.  I told Tom how lucky I feel to know him, and what an awesome teacher he is.

So why the snippet of my own real-life John Hughes film?  First, if there’s someone in your life who has shaped the great person you’ve become – let him or her know about it.  Second, if you think about the way influence works, it is always about timing and caring.  In the grand scheme of things, the amount of time Tom Carson was active in my life is minute, yet his influence has been enormous.  The time you spend with your clients may seem like forever but from a larger scale it is relatively small.  Are you making the most out of that time?  Demonstrate your care for your clients, colleagues, and vendor/partners so that your influence will have a positive lifelong impact like Mr. Carson’s had on me.