The Kids are Alright, so are the Teachers
Wednesday night services at Redeemer Lutheran Church featured liturgy presented by the confirmation students. The students performed their task very well. You can only present a text at its best by knowing the content and understanding it which is what the congregation saw that evening. Pastor Steph asked what I thought of that evening’s readers, and I replied that they were excellent. She told me that I should let them know. This is me letting you guys know; job well done. I thought this was a nice start for a column. I just didn’t know where it would end.
The next day I helped judge the Envirothon which was held at Lake Bronson State Park. The Minnesota Envirothon is an outdoor learning event designed to promote natural resource involvement and education through hands-on competition. The presentations ranged from pretty fair up to “blow your hair back” good.
During the competition, I witnessed an interaction between student presenters that made me feel good. As one of the students lost their place during the presentation, another student patiently and quietly prompted the first student back on track. This student helped another even as the first student struggled with the presentations well. It was an act of courage and kindness.
It’s so easy to disparage the youngest generation. Each generation does it so we have had a lot of practice. Despite these negative judgments, I think the truth is that the kids are doing alright. They have growing pains, but we all do, it is just that their pains are discussed so openly across the media, particularly social media.
It is true that young people do things that are not very smart. We all make mistakes then hopefully learn from these errors. I am not a parent, however long ago I was a kid. I think it is unfair to blame young people for many of their problems. Anything they do is a learned process, and they are learning from us. Their problems are not just their own, they are a mirror - our mirror.
Here is my point. As a young person, I patterned myself after the people I most respected; many of these people were teachers. It seems to me that teachers are disparaged pretty often in our culture. They either spend too much, cost too much, are pampered, have too much time off or don’t work hard enough. I have met a lot of teachers in my life, and I have never found even one of these descriptions to be accurate. I have found teachers to be intelligent, caring and an essential part of a child growing up to an adult.
It is our mentors that make us who we are, in my case many of those mentors were teachers. The confirmation students and the Envirothon students all had one thing in common, that commonality was a good teacher. These two events underline the importance of instructors, not just in learning but in becoming adults. This past week was teacher appreciation week, maybe next year they should get a month.
