FRONT PORCH FEATURE - The Heart of Teaching

By Barbara Ann Temple, Ph.D.

Picture this. Post lunch. A 5th grade classroom full of wiggling bodies. Sunlight spills across the heavily waxed tile floor. A teacher holds a well-worn hardback book in her lap, reading with a rhythm that carries the story around the room. Some eyes are wide open. Others are half-closed. She reaches the end of the day’s planned reading.

And suddenly, from the back of the room, comes a voice of the “cool kid”:

“Please, Mrs. Latta, please–just one more chapter!”

That’s the heart of teaching.

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In the southern regions, it’s mid to late August. In the plains of the Midwest, it’s likely post Labor Day. It’s early morning and a different sound emerges in neighborhoods across America: yellow school buses weaving through routes, making their rounds carrying precious multiaged children and young people to their respective schoolhouses. 

A new day. A fresh start. A blank canvas.  A wide open field ready to explore–and with it, countless opportunities to meet new students and teachers, make new friends, build new communities, and develop connections. Every year, a new school year begins, and with it comes life-changing experiences as teachers teach, students learn, and students teach so their teachers can learn.

***

This is where it begins. Somewhere along the way, a seed is planted. An unexpected moment materializes. Something wells up in us—a realization that we can make a difference in the lives of others, one classroom at a time, one student at a time.

Listening to the stories of my fellow educators in our community, I've heard where that seed was planted. Whether answering interview questions, sharing a cup of coffee, taking a walk in the woods together, hanging out at the end of a driveway, or attending a summer barbeque, I’ve had the honor to hear the heart behind why my friends answered the call.

***

Planning to become a professional chemist focused on research, Elton Caviness decided to spend the summer between undergraduate and graduate school teaching summer school at Wilkes Community College. Through that experience, Elton discovered, “I belonged in the classroom.”

One of Pat Bundy’s students had serious disciplinary issues and an absent father in prison. Pat and her support staff surrounded him with love and the belief that his intelligence could move him beyond his circumstances. Today, he is a Calculus professor at a major university—paying it forward in his own way.

Doris Ryan believes her ninth-grade Algebra teacher changed her life—and helped inspire her to become a high school math teacher. “I wanted to make a positive impact in their lives,” she said. The student Doris remembers most was a struggling young man from an extremely difficult home life. She’ll never forget the day he walked into her classroom dressed in a suit and tie and said, “Thank you. I will never give up!”

***

The heart of this story isn't really about what these students accomplished. It's about something much more fundamental: being seen for who we are and believing in what we can become.

And Lydia offered this simple advice to today’s students: “Find people who let you be your true self and spend time with them.”

Maybe that’s one of the greatest gifts a teacher can give a student–not telling them who to become but helping them discover who they already are–and then, perhaps, giving them the courage to become it.

Because stories like these—shared from porch to porch—are what keep our local voices strong, our mountain stories alive, and our community spirit thriving.