Teachers Have More Impact than they Know

Since I announced my retirement, I have heard from people, particularly former students, who I haven't had contact with for years.  It has caused me to think more generally about the impact teachers have on their students' lives.

Some things I'm thinking about:

1. Years ago, when I was a development officer for the USD Foundation, we had a prominent alum retire.  I won't name him, but he was the chief financial officer for a major corporation that you would all realize. In reflecting on his retirement for the USD alumni newsletter, he named a business faculty member who he said had a profound impact on his career. When the teacher was asked, he didn't recall his former student at all, i.e. the guy hadn't been much of a standout in class, but he had been influenced anyway.

2. I am also reminded of a movie few people will remember from 1980 called The Competition.  In it,  a character played by Lee Remick lists her pedigree as a piano teacher:

"Ludwig Von Beethoven taught Carl Czerny, who taught Leschetizky, who taught Schnabel, who taught Renaldi, who taught me."

What I taught was the product of things that my previous teachers taught to me, as well as meaning I made on my own.  Some of what I learned on my own was after I started teaching, so I could better explain things to students. And there are things nobody could have taught me years ago, because they were brand new. Some of what my own teachers taught me was what their teachers had taught them, and their own teachers before them.  

In the last couple of weeks, since I announced my retirement, I have heard from hundreds of people, many of them former students, many of them saying remarkably nice things.  Some are crystal clear in my memory from their time as students and some are more of a "what class were they in?" kind of memory. I see some often on Facebook, and some I haven't hardly heard from since they graduated.  

It leaves me pondering what people really learned from me, what they have taken farther based on the foundation I helped them develop, and how they are using this ability and knowledge today.  How are they, formally or informally, teaching others? Do they even remember which ideas and skills they first came to understand in my courses, but that they are using today?

Teachers don't pour knowledge into people's heard.  They create environments in which students can connect the dots and create new knowledge for themselves.

Often teachers don't know the true impact we have had on our students.