"Wanna Be a Rock Star? Become a Good Teacher"

 Op-Ed appearing in Providence Journal today...

By Colleen Kelly Mellor

She stands alongside the produce in the supermarket, glancing at me. She’s holding her hand to her mouth, to muffle what she’s saying, while she nods in my direction, as she speaks to a child standing by her. I know what she’s saying, for I’ve witnessed this action countless times before.

She’s a former student of mine.

But because she hadn’t physically matured when I taught her in junior high, I don’t recognize her, so I walk over to her and ask, “Which one are you?” She smiles sheepishly and tells me her name and then introduces her child to me, saying, “This is Mrs. Mellor, my old English teacher.” Here’s where I correct her (does that practice ever end?), adding: “I prefer ‘former’ teacher to ‘old.’ ”

We laugh with an ease that the years can’t diminish. It comes from spending each of 180 days together in a year she had me for English. She’s one of this teacher’s 5,250-plus former students.

I see them everywhere . . . in the malls . . . in parks . . . in grocery stores.

I’m a 30-year teacher. I’m not a school administrator. I’m not a policy maker (Department of Education). I didn’t become a guidance counselor, reading or resource teacher. I remained as classroom teacher.

I never planned my life this way. I was of the generation of women who expected to teach for a while, then leave the profession to raise my own kids. But my life took a strange path (divorce and death of spouse). And because I had done a stint as substitute elementary art teacher, I ended up teaching all levels, from kindergarten through grade 12.

Here’s what I know: As teacher, you may learn of your positive impact on students years later: They’ll tell you that you were an island of refuge in a sea of “terrible,” as they suffered intolerable home situations or less-than-successful school lives. Your words of encouragement were critical.

Others will say you gave them the confidence to discover their own gifts and talents.

How do I know? Former students told me on Facebook. Some literally brought me to tears.

The job was never easy and some days I vowed to leave it. I certainly didn’t hit the ball out of the park with all students, either, for effective teaching relies on the talents of the teacher, as well as student readiness to receive the knowledge. Throughout the years, parents and I chafed. In the tough strike years, we teachers were verbally assailed on the picket line. But I always believed in what I was doing.

I saw the profound impact of good teachers on my own child, too.

My younger daughter still marvels at the imaginative zeal that saw her third grade teacher arm her students with colored chalk, directing them to create a water-world of sea creatures on the blacktop behind her school. My daughter loved every day in that woman’s class. She was hardly her single memorable teacher.

Years later, when that daughter and I visited the cathedral in Bath, England, and noted some famous man in history whose name was carved into the stone wall of the entryway, she hooted in excitement and captured the moment in a photo to prove to her Rhode Island teacher that she was there, drinking deep of the fountain of history!

Her teachers were with us, throughout that trip, while we drove 3,000 miles across England, visiting Canterbury, where Thomas Becket was murdered, on to mystic Stonehenge, ending up at the stark White Cliffs of Dover where the D-Day invasion was born.

There was the language teacher who so inspired her in Spanish that this daughter took advanced Spanish in a French-Canadian university, getting a minor in that language.

What did these teachers have in common? They were the ones who expected and demanded the most of their students, the ones who were fair, impartial, prepared, but willing to engage in dialog with questioning students.

They had one further, critical attribute: They were excited about what they taught and it showed. They found new and challenging ways to present the material, for themselves as well as their students. In this way, they ever refreshed their skill and lit the fuse of intellectual curiosity in their young.

Their legacy? They’re forever etched in my daughter’s memory.

In a day and age when many young people find little satisfaction in jobs, teaching remains a viable alternative, for those who wish to make a difference.

So, I ask: Wanna be a star? Become a good teacher. Your students will become your ever-loyal fan club who’ll cherish your efforts forever.

You just won’t find out how important you were . . . till much later.

Colleen Kelly Mellor taught public school for 30 years before retiring. She now writes the blog at www.colleenkellymellor.com.