On teachers and teachings...

     When I was young thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up, most of the time I came around to teaching.  More than anything else, I wanted to teach.  Initially, I wanted to teach young children - I thought I would love to teach elementary school.  That dream fled when I experienced a half-day of teaching first graders during a career day (I want to say I was in sixth grade?)...  A half day that left me crushed - tired, hopelessly tired and defeated.  A little melodramatic for a first career day, but that's exactly what I felt.
     Somewhere around that point, I decided that I would like to instead teach high school.  And then I went to high school.  I imagine even the teachers who impacted me, who truly taught me there in those halls had no idea that I was even paying attention.  Hell, for too much of the time, I wasn't paying enough. 
     Entering college, wandering through those days (years) of undeclared status, teaching was still with me.  I long flirted with the idea of continuing my education until I could teach university classes.  (I of course wanted to avoid teaching intro classes - even then, there were limits...)  So many teachers at UW truly changed me and changed how I looked at the world.  I wanted to have the chance to have that influence on people.
     Eventually, life spun me in a different direction.  Other things were required of me and I went other places.  Part of me still wishes I had been able to follow through and end up teaching.  I look at those I know who do teach and am continually impressed with their resolve despite low pay and near constant bureaucratic struggles.  I have a hard time believing 100% that I could make it as a teacher - I am absolutely *not* a subscriber to the "those who can't, teach" philosophy.
     Most of all, though, I am grateful for those who have taught me, those who truly changed me (for the better, I like to think), those who were there for me.  Now that I have a daughter who will be entering kindergarten next year, I am thinking even more of teachers.  I only hope that she can have some of the same riches that I was given.  I know I will forget some people (and I feel awful for those I do forget), but I want to say thank you to some of the best teachers I have had the pleasure of learning from...
     In the early years:  Mrs. Britton (who took care of me in first grade), Mr. Dunham (who fostered an early love of words), Mr. Brecht (who let me opt out of advanced reading because I hated the book we were reading and I couldn't stop reading the one that the other group was assigned), Ms. Buscaj (Thanks for A Wrinkle In Time), Ms. Gustafson (who taught my class a whole lot about life in a really rough year), Mr. Pentland (Who probably had no idea I was listening in between my bouts of desperately trying to impress people in his class, typically by being an idiot), Mr. Gasser (who put up with a lot, almost always with a smile)...
     And at UW:  Diane LeBlanc (who took a small-town kid who thought he was worldly and open-minded and started him out on a whole other quest without ever putting him in his place), Alyson Hagy (What could I possibly say?  You are still teaching me.  You are truly selfless and giving.), Sharon Doubiago (Who taught me that it was ok to write about sticky, messy truth and gave me a semester that absolutely changed my life.), Colleen Denney (Who taught how to *see* art.  I can't think of a less melodramatic way of saying that.), Paisley Rekdal (who was kind to my poetry and patient with me)  Phil Holt (who managed to make the driest classic literature come alive in such a way that made it feel so fresh and fascinating), the "two Susans," (Susan A. dragged me kicking and screaming across the degree finish line and I appreciate that a lot more now than I did at the time.)...
     As I said, I'm sure there are others that I am forgetting at the moment.  And that says nothing of the other amazing teachers I know in my everyday life that I've never had the opportunity of taking actual classes from. 

Basically, thank you to all of those in the profession.  Know that you are appreciated.  Not enough by the country that we live in by any means...  But you change lives.  Daily.  And in my opinion, that's pretty darned cool.