Thank A Teacher Month

There were several moments I remember from my educational pursuits. A third grade teacher who read to us, my fourth grade teacher's kindness to an odd little boy with severe allergies, meeting a new friend in Junior High during desegregation, flunking out of college for lack of effort, going back as an adult husband and father and making straight A's. I've already written about Dr. Catherine Futral so I need to testify to the power of a math teacher to dispel fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Hazel Struby wasn't a full time professor at Mercer University. She was what they called "adjunct faculty", which I'm sure to the administration meant "not a tenured educator", but in my experience then and many times since to me has meant "knows what they are talking about and loves to teach it." Kind of a play on the old "those that can't..." rip on the teaching profession - Hazel Struby (and many others like her I have known) both could DO and could TEACH thank you very much.

She had taught in the public schools, and in a local private school, but now and then taught at Mercer, helping people solve the riddle of Math. Well friends, Math to me was more of a primal fear than a riddle, because in my last encounters with it, both of which happened in my immature youth... Math had whipped my butt. I had become, after a very promising start all through elementary and junior high school, Math's whipping boy. I was that team the Harlem Globetrotters played every week. Looked good on paper - filled with former college stars - but somehow managed to lose every single stinking time. Geometry - F, Trig - F, College Trig - F. I gave up on Math, but here I was in college trying to get a Business degree to help my family prosper and make my wife and my Mother proud.

"I can't do Math" I said.

Hazel heard all that from me and laughed out loud. Not just an "I'm amused" laugh, but an "you are the funniest thing I have ever seen" laugh.

She told me I was looking at Math the wrong way. "Math is a puzzle begging to be solved. It lays clues all over the place, never acts in any way other than the way it always has. Math is like those crooks on the Darwin awards. You can whip it with half your brain tied behind your back - if you are willing to work. I guarantee it."

I was.

I don't remember the tipping point, but somewhere that first term I "got it."

Hazel helped me banish the fear and I never looked back - except like today - in thanks.

Cue the Wayback Machine! "When One Person Cares"

I just heard from the best math teacher I ever had, Hazel Struby. She was googling and found a devotional I wrote. In her honor, I'll copy and paste another.

When One Person Cares

All the pieces for a disastrous fourth grade experience were there for me.

My appearance - only a Mother could love (since she pretty much decided how I'd look) that geeky boy with glasses, wierd wavy hair and hand me down clothes.

My point of origin - we were new in the community, just having moved out from the city into a rural area.

My timing - it's better to be new when everyone else is too. We didn't move until a month into the 4th grade. So everyone had picked their friends and the new had worn off everyone - except me.

My personality - didn't have one. I did though have horrible allergies that would cause me to break out into hives that made my skin look like a 3-D map of the world, swell my lip up until it turned inside out, and cause my eyes to close.

So if you were looking for someone to pick on, I was your huckleberry.

All those factors were crushed by one person's care. My home room teacher, Mrs. Pyles cared about me.

Somehow, without ever raising her voice, or making me a teacher's pet, she helped me find a place there, helped me when my allergies took hold, just helped me. She was only one person. But she was more than enough.

Later, much later, I was stuck in a dead end job, having thrown away my chance to get a college degree. I had bills, a young family, and a crushing need to do better. But it had been so long since I was in high school, I knew there was no way I could pass Math.

That was before I met Hazel Struby. She was a math teacher who would not allow me to fail. Shoot - she wouldn't allow me to make a B.

On the eve of back to school frenzy across the street at Valparaiso Elementary tomorrow, I think about those teachers God placed in my life at just the right time and just the right place to do for me what no one else could have done.

Friend, you'll never convince me God doesn't care.

Thing is, He works best through people.

You might be the one He's chosen for someone.

Or someone you know might have been placed within your circle of people just for you.

I'll never be able to repay everyone who has helped me.

But I know Who to thank. When I look back, I feel like this:

2 Samuel 22:24 (Msg)
I feel put back together,
and I'm watching my step.
God rewrote the text of my life
when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.

Do this for me today - open the book of your heart to God's eyes. Maybe there's a secret hurt, an unfulfilled longing that you've suffered for too long. If you give it to your loving Father, He'll take the fragments of your life story and rewrite it into His masterpiece.

When one person cares, it makes a difference. When that person is God, He makes all the difference - forever.

Grace!

David